Welcome to the True Democracy Project Blog
( Table of Contents )
This blog is intended to provide us with an interactive tool we can use to begin to work together to build and develop a truly democratic organization. The basic purpose of this organization shall be to provide us with the democratic means to unite our resources, and to administer these united resources democratically, in order to apply them to a political purpose to favorably affect our Common Good.
Rather than following the typical blog format of presenting periodic commentaries, this blog uses interactive blog technology to present a concrete proposal that is divided into chapters and sub-chapters, hoping that people will use the blog's feedback capacity to comment on these ideas, and/or contribute new ideas.
This proposal presents a prototype outline and plan for the general form and structure of the democratic organization that we imagine building. This prototype proposal is not intended to be regarded or accepted as a completed plan, but rather is intended to provide a point of departure for discussion and collaboration. The overarching idea that we hope will attract participants is 1) that we are in great danger, and that citizens need to find the means to organize ourselves in response to the dire emergencies of our times; 2) that it is within the power of the nation’s citizens to recapture democratic control of our government from the clutches of powerful special interests, but we must organize ourselves in order to do so; and 3) that modern digital communications technology provides us with powerful tools that have never before existed, whose awesome potential power we have barely begun to tap, and that these tools offer us the means, at our very fingertips, to actualize an inherently decentralized participatory democracy.
As our efforts to collaborate to develop this idea take shape, we will develop better interactive tools, but we hope that this basic interactive 'blog' format can get us started. The comments section on each blog page provides every reader with the opportunity to contribute her or his ideas and criticisms to the Project.
We hope that all who want to be a part of the True Democracy Project will feel comfortable in using this crude blog tool to move us forward. As imperfect as this particular tool may be for this purpose, surely we must feel a sense of awe as we remember that only a few short years ago a tool that had this kind and degree of potential for interactive social communications and collaboration did not even exist. A generation ago it was barely imaginable. Let’s use its potential, (which we may now properly regard as crude, given the rapid development in interactive tools), to develop better tools together.
Blog Layout
This proposal is divided into relatively short chapters and sub-chapters. Some of them are no more than a few paragraphs. We hope that dividing the proposal this way will allow for reader's comments to be addressed more specifically to the ideas presented.
We hope that navigation will be straightforward for all. Each page has links at the bottom to the next page, the preceding page, and back to the Table of Contents. The proposal can be read straight through by those with the time and the interest to do so, but we hope that the Table of Contents is comprehensive enough to provide a general outline of the ideas being presented, and to allow people to quickly find and read the parts that most interest them. There is considerable theoretical discussion in chapters 1-5 that may or may not be of interest to many. Please feel free to skip to the chapters that present the outline of the prototype plan itself. (A prototype organizational chart can be found here). There is some considerable repetition of ideas throughout the blog. This is intended so that readers who approach the proposal in a non-linear way, (skipping around rather than reading straight through), will likely encounter the ideas we most want to get across. We hope that any who read straight through will forgive these redundancies.
The entire proposal presented in this blog is also available in printable .pdf format. Please email us at TrueDemocracyProject@gmail.com if you would prefer to read the .pdf version.
Notes About Blog Moderation
Freedom of speech is the most essential building block of Democracy, but all freedoms carry responsibilities. In the context of this Project, we think that respectful civility and constructive tone and intent are reasonable responsibilities to expect everyone to assume.
Comments that are posted to this blog will always appear as written, but will be moderated (evaluated) 'after-the-fact', (after they appear), according to criteria that are as objective as is humanly possible. Comments that are not constructive in their tone and intent, as well as comments that are not civil and respectful to all, may be removed. Constructive tone and intent, and respectful civility, are the only criteria. Comments will never be removed simply because the moderator(s) disagree with them.
Human beings are only capable of limited objectivity, of course, in trying to judge whether the responsibilities pursuant to freedom of speech have been met or not. Setting oneself up with the powers to ‘judge’ the intent or tone of another is an exercise fraught with peril. A truly democratic means of moderation would require that those whose comments are removed after being moderated should have a means to appeal the moderators’ decisions. And, of course, in a democratic system the moderator(s) would be selected through a democratic process, and would be subject to some means of democratic accountability.
But until we build a democracy, we have no such democratic means of moderation, and for now we must trust in the good will and good judgment of the convening moderator(s). If they do not conduct themselves in a truly democratic spirit, then this project can only fail. (True Democracy cannot be built upon a foundation of censorship).
We hope that all will note that 'before-the-fact' moderation, (pre-screening comments before they are allowed to appear, and preventing certain comments from appearing at all), will not be employed. We believe that before-the-fact moderation inevitably leads to outright censorship. Allowing all comments to appear before being moderated at least allows for a published record and public awareness of anything that has been removed, (after it has appeared and been moderated), whereas in a system of before-the-fact ‘censorship’, none but the censor, and those censored, are even aware that something has been prevented from appearing. Before-the-fact moderation devolves into censorship, sooner or later, because it insulates the moderator(s) completely from public accountability.
As the project goes forward, developing a truly democratic system of moderation, to ensure that our channels of communication are regulated within the bounds of constructive intent and respectful civility, but remain open for the expression of all opinions without hindrance of their content, must be among our highest priorities.
All entries and comments in this blog are published into the public domain. Anyone contributing comments to any page of the blog is publishing those comments into the public domain. All entries and comments may be republished or reproduced, in whole or in part, by anyone.
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