So You Want to Write the Next SOPA?

In some of the conversations that we've had about open government, we've discussed the possibility of creating a platform that will facilitate a more direct democracy, using digital tools. Essentially, we've brainstormed a forum for representatives to post working drafts of upcoming bills, giving their constituents the opportunity to submit comments and suggestions. Last night, I found out that this is already happening. While sifting through my Flipboard for the night (so cool), I came across an article posted by The Atlantic, which talks about a new platform called Madison. Co-creater of the platform Congressman Darrel Issa (R-CA) (along with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)), calls the project "an ongoing experiment in direct digital democracy." Madison was so named because of a quote that the congressmen found particularly inspiring:


"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives"
                                                                             -James Madison


The two congressmen created the platform as way to introduce a bill called the OPEN Act, a follow-up to the SOPA and PIPA bills, that would be drafted in part by everyday citizens. So far, the draft of the bill has seen participation by about 150 people, and the congressmen are pleased with the outcome. Issa went on to say that Madison is "proof that crowdsourcing can deliver better bills and a more accountable government." 


Madison still has some issues. There are a few minor barriers to entry, including signing up for an account, and it is not yet widespread enough to garner the desired level of participation, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. 


The benefits of a program like this are numerous and compelling. The most apparent benefit to me is that this may be an effective tool to eliminate, or at least minimize, some of the corruption and self interest that goes on in congress. If people across the country have the opportunity to review a bill, they will probably object to some of the outrageous earmarks and pork barrel projects. On that note, some congressmen may be concerned about proving their loyalty to their constituents without engaging in pork barrel spending, but I would submit that an open process like this would do even more to convey the loyalty and devotion to the public interest of congresspersons across the nation. 

For every good idea though, there are drawbacks. For Madison, I fear the problem will come in the form of chaos. When everybody gets a say, and everybody is gunning for their own agendas, things can get muddled very quickly. As improvements and new editions of Madison emerge, I hope there will be some way to manage this chaos, and ensure that the focus stays on the issue at hand. 


Needless to say, there are a lot of issues circulating around this idea, and whether or not we decide to create a project that aligns with open government, we should all be aware of the changes that are happening at the ground level as we speak.

Give me Liberty

In my Western Political Heritage class we've been talking all semester about justice - what it is, why it's important, etc. In order to find the answer to these questions, we've been studying Plato's Republic, and yesterday we finally finished it. At the conclusion, *spoiler alert* Plato delineates 5 major types of regimes:

1. Aristocracy
2. Timocracy
3. Oligarchy
4. Democracy
5. Tyranny

Believe it or not, this list is ordered from best to worst. What's more, each regime leads cleanly to the next with the natural decline of society. That's right, I just said that democracy naturally devolves into tyranny. We could easily wake up one day and have a tyrant on our hands. How? Because America has problems, and we want someone who will be champion of the people - someone who will make America great again. And maybe they really will, but maybe once they do they won't want to hand power back over to the other guys who messed us up in the first place. So maybe they'll tinker with a few laws and hold on to power just a little longer. And a little longer. Until a little longer becomes an indefinite stay in the White House. Now I'm not saying this is going to happen. I still have a little bit of faith in the system that our Forefathers established, but I do want to take some time to examine the changes that our taking place in our democratic society right now.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
                   - Benjamin Franklin


Let's start with the Patriot Act. Let me begin by saying I felt a little nervous googling anything negative about this piece of legislation. I tried to steer clear of any inflammatory words or phrases so as not to be put on the No-Fly List (this happens more often than you might think - my aunt was put on the list not too long ago. I can assure you she isn't a threat to national security). Honestly though, I don't think the Patriot Act is ever going to affect me personally, and that's probably why we let it happen. As long as we all get to stay in our comforts zones, and as long we're not going to be the ones that are detained by the TSA, then why would we care? It keeps the terrorists at bay for heaven's sake! But isn't it kind of a slippery slope? I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with the overwhelming power of the government in this case to squelch the liberty of the individual. So is it worth it? I don't think so. People die every day - and sometimes it's at the hands of really malicious people - but if we continue to go down this path, bad things will still happen, we'll just have fewer civil liberties when those bad things happen. Now by no means do I think there shouldn't be any government control of national security, I just think it would be prudent to make sure that we won't be at risk for continued degradation of personal liberties.  


Unfortunately, the injustice doesn't end with the Patriot Act. If you heard about the North Carolina preschooler that had her home-made lunch of turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, and potato chips revoked and replaced with cafeteria chicken nuggets, you know what I mean. This is just ridiculous, and it isn't an isolated incident. My aunt (not the no-fly aunt), is a teacher in central California, and her entire school district was instructed to monitor children's lunches and confiscate unhealthy items as necessary. Are you kidding me? When did we decide that this level of government interference is okay? Not to mention, anybody who has ever eaten from a school cafeteria knows how completely insane it is to replace a homemade meal with that mystery meat on the basis of health. 


The early manifestations of these issues were very prominent in the 19th century. There were many different schools of thought on the role of the federal government, and how large we should allow it to grow. Despite ever-present concerns about a government that is too large and too powerful, ours has continued to grow. In fact, it would be fair to say that no president has ever left the office weaker than when he entered it. So what would our 19th century counterparts think of us now? What would all of the men who have fought and died for our country and our freedoms think of us now? Because quite frankly, I'm not sure this is what they had in mind. 

Are you sure about that?

We all want to hear what we want to hear. Regardless of our purpose in looking for information - be it personal edification, a research assignment, or trying to find something to prove somebody else wrong - we always gravitate toward the side of the issue that we most closely align with. But there's a problem here: how do you know the information you're getting is correct? 

I tried an experiment tonight: I typed in to my search bar "abortion is evil." Now obviously I expected to get some seriously biased information here, but there was a point to my experiment, just wait for it. The first result was the site for an organization called TFP Student Action, a project of The American Society for the protection of Tradition, Family, and Property, which works with college students on over 700 campuses across the nation to take a stance on prevalent issues. This organization had compiled a list of 10 reasons why abortion is evil. Some of these reasons are theology based, but there are also a good deal of precise statistics. Initially I thought, "well, how do I know these stats aren't incredibly skewed?" I knew, though, that the article at least had some sources to back up the information, so I was momentarily reassured. When I scrolled down to check out the sources, however, my doubts came flooding back. It looked a lot like TFP Student Action had done exactly what I did: they looked for some of the most convincing arguments that abortion is evil, from some very biased sources. I find this disconcerting. 

How am I supposed to find decent information if everybody that's compiling the information is just as biased as I am, and they're getting their information from sources that are just as biased as they are? This sounds like a vicious cycle. Of course, we all know about google scholar, and that's usually a good source for accurate studies and findings, but those reports are often very difficult to muddle through, and can get a bit dry. What am I supposed to do when I don't want to spend the time that I would researching for paper, but I want some solid information for my own benefit? I think one way to do this is to seek out information on both sides of an issue, and somehow try to reconcile the information to the most reasonable conclusion. It's not foolproof, but it's not doing us any good to constantly yield to our desires to read things we agree with. 

The fact is there are a lot of issues that are hotly debated, and it's not always good enough to do a google search and take the first hit on their word. Like David Perkins pointed out in his post, sometimes you have to take the path of most resistance. Sometimes you have to go the extra mile to uncover a bit of truth from the muddled and distorted information pool that we love so much. 

Let's Make This Fun

I think we had some really good ideas come out of our crowd-sourcing experiment today, and I wanted to record some initial thoughts. First, I think some of the apps that were discussed were very cool, and have the potential to be really great resources, but they also don't excite me very much. To be quite honest, I am feeling a little burnt out on technology and the endless flow of apps. I already have to spend so much time on my computer and on my phone, that it just isn't likely that I would download and use an informational app like that. If I were already planning on voting and just needed a source of aggregated information, it would be perfect, but it wouldn't do anything to get me excited about voting in and of itself.

One of the ideas that we talked about was putting wack-a-candidate game in the Wilk. We haven't really ironed out the details yet, so more to come on that, but I wanted to lay out some of the reasoning behind our decision.

First off, the machine will be attractive. It will be placed in a key location with a lot of foot traffic, and will probably have a certain degree of exciting music/ flashing lights/ etc. Once we have people lured in, we will take advantage of their fun-loving and competitive natures, and have them play a game that doesn't have a prize per se, but generates unbiased, informative, bite-size pieces of information about the whole field of candidates. We felt that the main hurdle would be making it fun for people to gather information, and once we've succeeded in doing that, we can trust the sense of "civic duty" to take over.

Word of a project like this will quickly spread across campus, and we wouldn't need advertising much or produce incentives to try our product. It will be self-perpetuating. Why? Because it will be fun - fun to create and fun to use. It will be uplifting, informative, and will add a little more depth to the political understanding of BYU students.

Some additional thoughts:


In an effort to go get some social proof, I floated this idea to a few friends, and they all seemed quite interested. Everybody I talked to agreed that having a physical game in the Wilk that didn't require a lot of time or effort to play is something they would be interested in. When I talked to my roommate about generating the facts, we discussed the possibility of printing out "tickets" that would have information about various candidates and their platforms, and then those tickets could be redeemable for some sort of prize.

A few people pointed out skepticism about our ability to build a legitimate game worth playing, but honestly, I think it can be done. We have a pretty diverse field of specialties in our class, and I think we would have the necessary skills to get it done. Plus, the whack-a-candidate machine probably wouldn't require as much specialty on the technical side as other games would. That's it for now, but I'll probably be putting out another post with more information or insight as it comes. If anybody has any thoughts to add to this potential idea please do!

Open-Government: Hope for the Future of Campaign Season?

While we were talking in class today about open-government, I had a thought about the impact open-government policies might have on the nature of elections and campaigning. The way the system is set up now, we all have issues that matter to us, and ideas about what kind of policies we think would help correct those issues, but we never get very accurate feedback on exactly what policies are actually being put in place, or what effects those policies actually have. Instead, we are being force fed a load of contrarian media nonsense that does nothing to promote the evolution of successful political ideas. Essentially, we elect a present because he (or, hypothetically, she) stands on our side of the fence, and then we spend four years in the dark, until we try to blindly defend (or tear down) the policies of the president come the next election. We do this based only on what we think might have happened, and our perception is, of course, based on our consumption of news media outlets such as Fox or CNN.

So with this in mind, the campaign trail becomes more a trial of character and integrity than anything else. This is because we understand that we won't have much of a clue about the policies that are put in place, so at the very least we want a president that seems like they'll conduct themselves honestly and uprightly during their four-year term. But what if we went in to election season with a different frame of mind?

If we are confident that our president (and other elected representatives) will operate within a framework of transparency and openness, might we be more concerned with the details of a candidate's political platform than we are now? I think we would. And this is nothing new; if people feel involved and informed, they care more. It's as simple as that.

Certainly there are plenty of setbacks with open-government, but I think the idea is definitely one to consider in greater detail. This kind of fundamental shift in the way our government functions could potentially change the outlook and mindset of an entire country.

Finding a Balance

Today my group talked a bit about the balance between obedience and disruptive ideas/ questions, but I wanted to continue thinking about some of the pros and cons of each. Like I mentioned in class, John Locke promoted the value of both. Originally, he asserted that it was the duty of citizens to passively obey political authority, so long as that authority didn't threaten fundamental religious beliefs. Later in his life his point of view evolved to include the right of resistance in the face of unjust political authority. So where do we find a balance between the two?

The first question that I want to address is how authority hindered the flow of new ideas in the 17th century:

• When John Locke attended Oxford, he was largely dissatisfied with the curriculum. He felt that the University was focusing too much on the outdated views of Aristotle, and ignoring the important questions that were being raised by such natural philosophers as Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. One reason that the University was so slow to change may be that political and religious leaders felt threatened by the onslaught of new ideas that may have affected their credibility.
• When Locke and one of his good friends, the Earl of Shaftesbury, launched a campaign to exclude the right of the King to pass the throne to his brother, they were forced to leave the country in exile. This is a painfully obvious example of authority trying to control the opposition for unjust reasons.

Do we still have figures that represent "the man" today? Sure. But I'm not so sure the problems we see with authority today are as black and white as they were in the 17th century. So who is "the man" today?

• The government
• State & Local, National, International
• Corporations
• Note Dr. Zapalla's blog post on patents
• The public
• Extremist factions resist progress of those championing opposing views

So today we're seeing a shift to a system where anybody can gain power and authority (someone mentioned the ability of any entrepreneur to secure authority just by building a successful business) and with the easy flow of information, people have to work as hard as ever to maintain that authority. But is this bad? Not necessarily. Let's look at some of the positive results we can see from a just and legitimate framework of authoritative figures:

• Guidance and direction
• Without a social/ political/ informational hierarchy, there is just no way to muddle through all the information and resources available to us. Garret Bassett mentions this in his post, and Open-Access Dilemma.
• Structure
• Anarchy is just not good.
• All the usual refrains
• Prosperity, freedom, etc. 

So why would you question the system and disrupt harmony and civil order? Because these authoritative figures are inherently bad? No way! You question for the sake of the betterment of mankind, because you believe in what you're saying. Take for example Galileo: he didn't want to upset the Catholic Church. On the contrary, he had the Church's best interests in mind when he decided to set out to give people better, more accurate information. The same could be said for most, if not all, of the great thinkers of the enlightenment and the scientific revolution. And so the same should be said for us. The ability to question authority is both a right and a duty, but it shouldn't be done with the intent to disrupt the harmony of society, it should be done with righteous passions and just convictions that will generate a positive and constructive outcome.

Promoting Self-Reliance

When I was growing up, it wasn't uncommon for my family to spend a spare afternoon at the nursing home, where we would visit one of my dad's favorite clients. Dorothy Towne was a kind, warm lady, and we considered her to be a dear family friend. She led a very successful life, and had quite a bit of money and assets to her name. When she passed away she appointed my dad to be the trustee of her estate. In the years since, in accordance with her wishes, my parents have created a thriving charitable foundation that does a lot of good for the people of Reno.

Given this background, I'm considering minoring in non-profit management, and going on to play a part in the growth and management of the Dorothy Towne Foundation. Something that my parents and I are very concerned with is the focus (or lack thereof) on promoting self-reliance when doing charitable or philanthropic work. It seems that all too often charity is a fleeting and temporary solution to a permanent problem. Fortunately though, we can look to the Church for a prime example of philanthropy in its most ideal form. I recently read an article in the Deseret News that highlights the influence of the Church's work on philanthropic organizations around the world.

The ability to work for something is a blessing often overlooked. As the above article noted, people can't always pay for the materials to build a well, but they can mix the cement and dig the hole, and that's enough to promote a sense of pride and accomplishment that can inspire future growth.

When Europeans began colonizing the Americas in the 17th century, their friends back home saw a perfect opportunity for philanthropy in its truest sense. They saw the opportunity to give resources to the struggling pioneers, so that they could create a whole new world. Today we have opportunities to reach a new generation of struggling pioneers. There are a whole lot of people out there looking to build a better life for their families and countrymen, but lack the resources to do so. By engaging in a tried and true method of self-reliance based philanthropy, we can give a leg up to those modern pioneers who, like so many before them, are looking to create a whole new world.