Wikipedia has a good paragraph on liberalism which correlates well with the evolution of liberalism in the U.S. “Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, constitutional government and privacy rights. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.” The U.S. as a latecomer in liberalism was able to replace the traditional European norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, and representative democracy in forming a federation of states. The federation under liberalism ended royal monopolies, and restrictive state trade barriers, and promoted free markets. In contrast, the U.S. did not have or inherit the European political and economic system which led to many conflicts and wars as evidenced by its history. However, the evolution of a new government system in the U.S. had no precedence, it ended with today’s two-party system dividing the federation with red and blue color in its 50 states.
The liberalism intrinsically never had a complete or well-thought-out political system; even the economic system it offered only philosophy rather than an operational system. The U.S. with its resources, wealth, and fortunate history of smooth nation-building (expansion) has become the leader of the ‘liberal’ world advocating freedom and democracy and offering its political and economic philosophy ( an evolving system) for the world (against communism). Communism is one form of socialism initially experimented and led by the Soviet Union offering the mostly underdeveloped countries a revolutionary approach of gaining political and economic independence. It turned out the soviet model failed. The collapse of the Soviet Union was certainly due to its economy, but the victory of the Cold War cannot be attributed to the superiority of the Western political system. The strategy of the U.S. allying with communist China (a huge economic market) was the prime reason for the West winning over the economy. Since the Soviet economic collapse (1991), China’s economy maintained its fast growth to become the world’s second economic power offering economists a turf to debate the power of the Chinese economic system (which they claim is an evolving learning-correcting-adopting system. The fact that the U.S. felt the threat from China was due to the shining economic statistics China had sustained over decades, but its reaction to launch an all-out anti-China policy was wrong in theory and strategy.
This year is the U.S. presidential election year. For the first time, the vast majority of American voters have shown little confidence in whom to select. The two major parties, the Democrats and Republicans, each have a senior front-runner candidate (Biden 81 and Trump 78) not able to unite the federation. This casts a serious question: Why don’t we have a stable predictable presidential succession process in the U.S. political system? Why are American citizens being locked by the two-party system? There is a new political party, not left, not right, called Forward Party. The reason, we introduce and discuss Forward Party is not because it offers a new political philosophy, rather it is asking the right question: “Do you feel that the legacy parties don’t represent you?” This is a very legitimate question, if you do feel that way, then the next question is what can you do about it? Can the Forward Party be the third Party in the U.S. political System? I wish it could, but I would bet you did not think so. Unfortunately, our presidential election (and other elections) is a fund-raising contest. One needs to raise a lot of money to win a race. This is why the Democratic Party can’t replace Biden once he has raised a pile of money. That is also the reason that any new party, like Forward Party, cannot run a presidential ticket in 2024. So, the Forward Party must build a party for the future.
Citizens must be able to change the course and direction of the electoral process. We voters must demand that the government sets up a third-party campaign account with a basic amount of funds. Whenever citizens are dissatisfied with the candidates of the two major parties, they can contribute to a third-party account to increase their funds. Funds there for debate and primary campaigns are only available to qualified third-party candidates. This mechanism ensures that there are always third-party candidates available. It would be great if the two major parties could win more than half of the votes or more; but if they cannot, then a third party should have a chance to emerge. It may be too late in 2024, but it would be worth pursuing the idea in future U.S. presidential elections. This is a “spare tire” or “insurance” concept that can encourage the two major parties to be more careful in nominating candidates, and at the same time allow voters to express dissatisfaction and look for better alternative candidates. I urge the Forward Party to move in this direction.
