Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried from time to time”. The problem isn’t with the concept of democracy. In concept, it seems like the best form of government that people have invented so far. The problem is with its implementation. Its implementation is completely dominated by politics.

Politics produces “winners” and “losers” with very little intelligent debate, especially among the citizens. What is missing is problem solving. I have spent my whole life around people that I know I disagree with politically. But I also know that we work well together. If we were given one of the world’s problems to approach as a problem to be solved instead of a political issue, I’m confident that we could make good progress. However, political topics evoke so much emotion that when discussed face to face, it becomes difficult to stick to the problem solving and avoid a political argument. Therefore, people who disagree don’t usually talk about politics. We mostly talk about these issues with people we know we agree with and rarely have an occasion to give any critical thought to the problems that face our country and the world.

To make matters worse, much of our mainstream TV news media seem more interested in entertaining us than informing us. So much time is spent on sensational stories and stories about celebrities that there is little time left for real news that actually relates to the world’s problems. When the news media does try to address public policy, it almost always focuses on the political aspects. After all, a fight is more entertaining than the facts and reasoning we need to understand in order to be responsible citizens of a democracy.

Finally, to top it all off, the politicians are above all else interested in winning. Because winning matters more than intelligent debate, much of what they say is best characterized as propaganda. I don’t care about Republicans or Democrats or their posturing on policy matters. I care about having actual policies that work. If someone will talk to us like intelligent adults and lay out sound reasoning based on actual facts, I won’t much care about their party affiliation. However, the desire of each of our two parties to become the one dominant party means we almost never get any respect for our intelligence from the politicians.

This all leads to what I call “dumb-ass democracy”. We are free to vote for our choice of politicians, but we have little basis for making a decision other than their personalities, party affiliation or general ideology. Campaigns are all sales and marketing with no meaningful discussion of the issues. A dumb-ass democracy within a small, weak country is harmful mainly to itself. A dumb-ass democracy within the world’s only superpower can be extremely destructive to itself as well as the rest of the world.

The idea for this site came to me after the 2002 elections. After being bombarded with stupid, misleading, dishonest, disgusting political ads for an extended period of time, I was motivated to try to do something to provide for any intelligent debate of issues which are literally of life and death importance. However, this was a part-time activity for me and I could just never get it started. Now after two more election cycles, each completely disgusting, I have finally managed to get it developed. The ridiculous political ads that we suffer through actually work. You can be sure that the political parties wouldn’t spend so much money on them if they didn’t work. Think about it. In our democracy, we are choosing our leaders based mostly on our “gut feel” for the candidates (how good they look on TV), mindless party affiliation, mindless ideology, belligerent and hateful media commentators and those political TV ads. Yikes!

I hope you find this site effective in helping you participate in a real public debate so that we Americans can improve our democracy. However, it will only be successful if it gets wide participation. If you think this is useful, tell everyone you know of all political stripes!

What This Site Is

This web site is an attempt to use the Internet as a way of having an intelligent public debate focused on problem solving instead of “in your face” politics.  Your input is vital.  I will start off the discussion of each topic, explaining how I see it and why.  I will break the topic down into individual arguments so we can discuss the fine points that are necessary for finding real solutions.  On each point you can agree or disagree and optionally provide additional new ideas.  Hopefully, realistic solutions that are as “win-win” as possible can be evolved and we will find our way past the ideological polarization that has gripped our country.

What this Site Is Not

This is not a blog.  Blogs are mostly one-way communications where the blogger puts forth his opinions everyday.  This site will not continue if it becomes a one-way communication.  Your input is necessary to achieve the purpose of an informed public debate.

This is not a forum. In a forum, respondents’ comments are usually listed in the order they are received with very little oversight in their publication. Each reader of the forum must read through many repetitive comments. Often the comments lack supporting facts and constructive ideas. Often the comments are inflammatory. Even in a moderated forum, the moderation is usually limited to filtering the responses for the purpose of removing repetitive and inflammatory comments. This site is very moderated. All comments will be available unless they violate common decency, but the main pages will be limited to the substantive, constructive ideas submitted. They will be organized in a way that allows us to focus on our differences and seek to work through these differences in order to find solutions that a large majority of us can agree with. The idea is to incorporate input into a coherent solution to the problem under discussion. Finally, most forums change the topic every few days. This site will stick to the same topic for a much more extended period of time. Problem solving does not work that quickly.

This is not a “wiki”. A wiki is a collaborative site where many people contribute to articles and the community of contributors decide which changes to articles are kept and which ones are discarded. Although it was tempting to use this model since the software to run such a site is already developed, it didn’t seem like this model was well suited to the synthesis required for problem solving, especially when the problems were difficult and the topic would be controversial. After reading an article about the wars that go on regarding the Wikipedia article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was convinced that the wiki model would not work for this purpose.

Who Is it For?

Although the site is focused on U.S. policies, the participation by people of all countries is welcome.  A good idea is good regardless of the nationality of the person who thought of it.  And of course, in matters of foreign policy we will be talking about someone else’s country, so their input is extremely relevant.

Guiding Principles

This site will be run on the following principles:

Facts and reason are the foundation.

The information that is presented here must be substantiated as much as possible.  I will attempt to provide news source references for the facts I present here.  When you submit your opinions please provide references for your facts from a reputable news source if they are not already established here.

We all hear untrue things every day.  There is a lot of bad information on the Internet.  Please try to find reputable sources for your facts.  That is not to say that an under-reported fact for which there may be only a single reference should not be used, but try to use legitimate news sources.

Please also try to present all the relevant facts. What we hear in the political debate is often misleading because additional information is withheld if it doesn’t fit the argument being presented. I will often solicit your help in finding additional information.

Once we have a good base of facts, we must then apply reason to these facts, do some creative thinking, and come up with a solution that has a chance of actually working.

Our goals must be guided by a universal morality.

I would like everyone to apply the oldest, most universal moral principle in the history of mankind as you think about these issues.  As corny as it might sound in our sophisticated world, I would like for you to apply the “golden rule”, basically:

Treat others as you would like them to treat you.

This basic principle is found almost universally in the religions of the past and present.  It is the most fundamental moral principle that we should all be able to agree on.

No religious arguments will be accepted here.  I’m sure you have strong convictions about your religious beliefs, but so do many other people who happen to practice a different religion.  It simply won’t work to try to impose your specific religious beliefs on somebody of a different religion.  On the other hand, because the golden rule is universal, it will work quite well as a guiding moral principle.

Our solutions must take basic human nature into account.

If we ignore basic human nature in coming up with solutions to problems then we will never permanently solve the problems.  Over and over again, we see one group of people trying to beat another group into submission.  If you beat them hard enough, it may temporarily look like your problem with them is solved, but there will be a smoldering hatred that will erupt again at some point.  This principle is best summarized as:

Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes.

Try as hard as you can to honestly understand what it feels like to be in the other group’s position.  Ask yourself how your solution is going to feel to them and how you would react to it if you were in their position.

Our solutions must be workable.

This seems obvious, but often we find that our solutions are driven by ideology and not practicality.  We all want to stick to our principles but if we do so in such a way that we ignore practicality, we will produce solutions that will not work and are a waste of time.

Focus on policy and leave the politics for another outlet.

There is already plenty of “political debate” out there. This site will focus on policy and will not tolerate cheerleading or scorn for any political parties, elected officials, candidates or ideologies. The goal here is to be as non-political as possible and to promote understanding of the issues and creation of realistic solutions. The words “liberal”, “conservative”, “Democrat”, or “Republican” will not be displayed on the main discussion pages. Whatever you write will be in the complete log of comments on a subject, but political commentary will not be promoted to the main pages. This site is about solutions and leaving the politics behind is the only way for such a divided nation to have a productive debate.

How the Site Works

Each topic will be begun by me, the moderator, with my thoughts on the subject.  There are buttons all along the way for you to agree or disagree with each point and provide a comment if you have something new and constructive to add.

I suggest you read through each topic and then take some time to think about the subject.  After all, one of the benefits of this method of debate is that we are allowed the time we need to think before we comment.

Please don’t add a comment if you simply agree with the position as presented or have no additional disagreements beyond the ones that are already posted.  Redundant comments that increase the workload of moderating the site will only slow us down.  But if you agree and have an additional point that hasn’t been posted, submit it as a comment.  If you disagree for a reason that hasn’t been posted, submit a comment.  I will use the comments to evolve side-by-side viewpoints that we can consider.  As additional points of view are submitted, the main pages for a topic will be reorganized and new voting on the reorganized subject will be solicited.

If you want to include your name along with your comments, feel free to do so.  If you want to submit a comment anonymously, feel free to do that as well.  We are going to be more interested in what you say than who you are.  However, if you are going to identify yourself and you are somebody whose name we would recognize as an expert, official, etc., then please email moderator@mywhitehouse.org suggesting a method for confirming your identity.  Obviously, nobody should claim to be someone who they are not.

The voting will be fun but will also be meaningless if people cheat and vote multiple times. There is no good way to enforce honest voting without some sort of registration, and I would prefer to keep it simple at this point. I will consider setting up a registration procedure if the site is successful. So, you are encouraged to vote on every issue, once! However, you may certainly have additional ideas later, so submitting multiple comments with new, constructive ideas is welcome.

Of course this site doesn’t have the huge resources behind it that whitehouse.gov has.  I have a more-than-full-time job that doesn’t involve any of this.  It also won’t work if it requires a large amount of your time.  Therefore, the topics for the site will be added a little at a time if this process works.  It will work best if everybody has the time to participate in every solution, so despite all the subjects mentioned on the home page, the site is going to grow the number of projects fairly slowly.  The first active topic is “Iraq” in the foreign policy section.  If this works, then there are other pressing foreign policy problems to be addressed and so we will probably stay in the foreign policy section for a while.

Occasionally responses will be disabled while I'm integrating comments into main pages, on vacation, or just trying to catch up. If this works, I’ll get volunteers to help.

Why do this?

What can we hope to accomplish here? It’s up to you. Many people don’t vote, even in presidential elections. Therefore, I would expect many people to have no interest in this at all. Many other people probably would not want to take the time to research these subjects and contribute to the solutions. However, those people may find time to read what others contribute here and vote on the ideas. That still leaves a large number of people who might actually spend a significant amount of time working on these problems (I just give up watching a bunch of crime dramas on TV in the evenings!). If a large number of us take the time to have a thoughtful, fact-based debate, we can probably do a better job of formulating policy than politicians who advance ideological agendas, assume our ignorance and pander to our emotions. At the very least, those of us who participate can use this website as a tool to clarify our thinking, making us more informed citizens who are less susceptible to propaganda.

And, uh … any politicians who might read this ...

If you are a politician, I apologize in advance if I hurt your feelings here. I have quite a few bad things to say about politics and politicians on the site. But I don’t think I’m alone in being fairly disgusted by our political process. I am amazed that we are able to run the world’s only super power (and therefore much of the world) by electing our leaders with such an utterly stupid process. So any politician who wants to participate here and treat us like adults will have my utmost admiration.

That’s it!  Go to the Foreign Policy page, choose the Iraq topic and start reading, thinking, and problem solving.

If you find this useful, please tell everyone you know!

If you have suggestions for this process, submit them here:

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