Author’s Note:
I personally would like to come up with a different name at some point, but in a nutshell, there are two cores to this political party:
1) Doing away with many unnecessary laws to facilitate as much personal freedoms as responsibly as possible.
2) An anti-imperialist platform, which aims to pull America out of most foreign affairs and focus almost entirely on domestic matters.
For long, America has gloated its pride of being a land of freedom and liberty. Despite over two centuries of this, it is a relatively empty assertion to boast, as it is buried under an abundance of moral and religious dogma in our social culture, and a lack of integrity and honor in our political culture.
Though I personally believe that the use of a party is contradictory to Washington’s warning against the use of political parties in his Farewell Address, it is nonetheless a concrete reality with our system, at the very least given to us as a right, to allow us to modify our system of government. As a party, we can and should recruit meritorious individuals to nominate for political positions, but our most important function before that is to press for our causes and educate others on them; so no matter who takes up governance, the populace can push this initiative for the new representative to follow suit with.
As it stands, we do not seek to abolish our government; only to alter it, and for the better.
Thus, I put forward this message to establish the cause of the American “Hedonist Patriot Party”.
The Mission of the Hedonist Patriot Party
I use the terms “hedonist” and “patriot” to illustrate our cause, because it incorporates both ideologies: having a solid sense of connection towards one’s country and Her people in that we need each other united, and the philosophy of seeking pleasure in one’s life as we are alive only once. This is a perfect marriage of concepts for a nation such as America, which was borne with blood from the grip of tyranny, to finally be a people freed from the clutches of bigotry, both from church and state.
Therefore, it is the mission of the Hedonist Patriot to restore and stand for not only the unique character of our nationality that unites us all, but to enforce that it is meant to allow our people to live a quality of life unfettered by frivolous policies. We seem to find ourselves in a perpetual state of disharmony among one another, and our policies do not reflect that we are a land of liberty and opportunity. These cases are unacceptable to the Hedonist Patriot.
Initial Positions of the Hedonist Patriot Party
To accomplish our mission, we put forward the following as our initial positions to establish what it is that we stand for.
Military
For the Military front, we aim to…
- Withdraw all military activity worldwide.
- Dissolve the overseas/expeditionary responsibilities of the National Guard. As part-time soldiers living two lives, they should be for homeland defense only; such as against natural disasters, invasions, or uprisings.
- Mandate an annual draft into the National Guard (after first removing overseas responsibilities).
- Disband NATO. It is a Cold-War artifact we shouldn’t need anymore, nor should we coerce other nations to fight with us.
- Shut down all overseas military bases and support funding to other countries, and instead use the plenty of carriers we have as bases at sea, to project our power where our allies need us.
Foreign Policy
For the Foreign Policy front, we aim to…
- Dissolve all international trade deals.
- Withdraw from the UN and other international treaties.
- Establish a “fair and firm” immigration policy, giving immigrants the option to pursue a rigorous and enforced naturalization process; which if the option is not taken, is then grounds for deporting.
- Return to a status of neutrality and non-involvement with affairs outside of our borders.
Domestic Policy
For the Domestic Policy front, we aim to…
- Improve cultural and legal relations, and enforce the sovereignty, of the indigenous tribes and their lands as dependent nations. Remove the term “Reservation” from their name, and instead use a term of the tribe’s choice.
- Establish a vote to all of America’s self-governing insular territories to elect whether they wish to become a US state, retain their status as insular territory, or break away from US domain and become sovereign nations of their own.
- Open up viability to all external countries to consider joining the United States.
- Use military/civilian construction brigades (such as the Civilian Conservation Corps program during the New Deal) to gentrify and protect downtrodden cities, at no cost to the afflicted areas.
Economic
For the Economic front, we aim to…
- Ratify a basic income system. No one should be completely starved of currency for any reason whatsoever. Either implement the Alaska Permanent Fund model, the Negative Income Tax model, or Thomas Paine’s land tax model. Or, some combination of the three.
- Abolish all other welfare programs (ie: Section 8, Minimum Wage, etc.) in exchange for the basic income plan.
- Dissolve the Federal Reserve, and have the government operate the manufacture and distribution of currency instead.
- Prevent American businesses from hiring international labor, or hiring immigrants who have not yet decided to undergo naturalization.
- Implement only two forms of tax: Land, and Income. All others, such as “Capital Gains” or “Sales” taxes are to be seen as “Income”.
Healthcare
For the Healthcare front, we aim to…
- Ban bodily mutilation among those under the age of 18. Body modding should be postponed at all measures until the individual is 18, like everything else.
- Finance stem-cell research, cyborg/prosthetics research, and other medical frontiers for research, to better the human condition against ailments.
- Nationalize all healthcare industries and businesses.
Education
For the Education front, we aim to…
- Abolish homework in schools. Time spent at home should be with family and friends, and work should stay at work.
- Designate specific courses of education, particularly the more critical skills such as healthcare, trades, or sciences, to be offered for free at any public educational institution.
- Establish an online database for the most up-to-date literature to use in selected courses, to ease the burden of both the cost of books, and the consumption of resources required to produce them.
- For private institutions where students may borrow funding to complete education, put a maximum simple-interest rate to help keep costs as low as possible.
Statutory
For the Statutory front, we aim to…
- Release restrictions on all personally-owned weapons to constitutional level only. The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
- Bring age of adulthood and responsibility to 18. This means all age of consent laws are nullified to 18, alcohol and tobacco use are 18, age to hold a public office starts at 18, etc.
- Abolish all use of classifying people based on race, sex, gender, et al, in official documentation and legal acts. The best way to erase these prejudices is to remove it from legal language and practice entirely; and have everyone subject to the same laws in the same manner.
- Intellectual-Property law reforms. While persons should have the right to defend the rights to their intellectual properties, laws and court settlements have been made to abominable levels that ultimately stifles society, and we aim to ease these burdens.
- Legalize all forms of recreational substances in their earth-borne forms only. For example, this means opium is legal because it comes from the flower, no different from tobacco; but heroin is still illegal because it is refined, way more potent and dangerous.
- Legalize and regulate prostitution nationwide.
- Legalize and regulate gambling nationwide.
- Remove many regulations regarding censorship, required educational/informational programming, etc.
- Support the constitutionality of abortion. Not everyone in the party has to agree on the ethics, but we wish to assert that a medically-viable professional practice that can be litigated is preferable to abortion being done by oneself and risking infection or other medical maladies.
- Abolish the Death Penalty in favor of life sentences.
Electoral
For the Electoral front, we aim to…
- Abolish the Electoral College, and establish the “popular vote” as the basis for electing a political officer.
- Criminalize gerrymandering.
- Criminalize “corruption” in legislation (ie: corporate/foreign funds to advance a law).
- Enact a law to limit the powers of political parties, much the same way the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is in force to limit the powers of a corporation in a market.
- Discontinue federal funding of parties.
Other
For all other fronts that do not pertain to a specific area, we aim to…
- Remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.
- Revert our motto from “In God We Trust” back to “E Pluribus Unum”.
The Hedonist Patriot Party Code of Conduct
A code of conduct will be necessary for anyone who aims to participate in the cause of the Hedonist Patriot, as this will maintain the integrity we need to put forward our cases.
- Members shall not cause any harm or incite social chaos to advance our mission. We shall utilize our right of peaceable assembly to influence and educate our nation’s people to ourselves as an alternative to the aging and corrupted “two-party” implementation.
- Members shall not coerce others to join the party or devise mechanisms that force potential members to stay in the party. This demonstrates desperation for retention and falsehood, which are values we wish not to illustrate ourselves with.
- Members shall drop all registry and advocacy for any other political party. We are especially fierce about this with the current two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, as they have the strongest, unwavering, and overall stagnant stronghold on our country’s system, responsible for a number of our national ills.
- The party shall not accept bribes, endorsements, or affiliations, of other parties political or otherwise, nor shall it do the same and bribe, endorse, or affiliate. We wish to keep our cause pure of influence and be our own party; lest we end up as backward as the Republicans have from their abolitionist roots in favor of corporate and religious pandering. We are committed to representing our own mission, and won’t seek other parties to endorse us, as they have their own.
- The party shall not subvert its own rules to unfairly advance a policy it would not condone, or a person to be in charge. The Democrats were guilty of this during the 2016 election season, and we do not wish to be marred with the same stigma.
- The party shall advance its message with the interest of the entire American populace in mind. We do not seek to benefit specific groups; we aim for an “everyone or no one” doctrine in our positions for the nation in whole.
SantoZine 