PLATFORM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY
PARTY
DRAFT#16,
MARCH 28, 2014
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I.
THE PARTY’S PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS AND
FUTURE VISION
We are reaching out to all
who are searching for and willing to lead a positive and peaceful Second
American Revolution.
Our agenda is fully
consistent with the spirit of the original American Revolution, the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Party bases its
agenda and fundamental principles on the largely forgotten Ninth Amendment of
the American Constitution. This Amendment subordinates the coercive powers of
government to the God-given sovereignty, freedom, dignity and “inalienable
rights” of each human person. America’s founders devoted their “lives, fortunes
and sacred honor” to defend this principle. By reviving popular understanding
and support for America’s founding principles our Party will bring about a new
unity among now divided Americans on the politically suppressed issue of who
should own and control the future wealth of our nation.
The central feature in the
platform of the American Revolutionary Party is its proposed Capital
Homestead Act. This act calls for a comprehensive restructuring of America’s
economic policies to grow the economy in ways that create a nation of capital
owners, citizens who are independent of big government, big business, and big
labor for their economic well-being. This Act is based on the party’s Just
Third Way philosophy. This philosophy embodies a morality, respect for life
and human dignity, and sense of the common good that is more just than
socialism (which institutionalizes envy) and capitalism (which
institutionalizes greed). Because it is based on changing the system for
financing future growth to equalize ownership opportunity, Capital Homesteading
will lift poor and middle-income Americans, without redistributing existing
wealth from today’s tiny ownership elite.
[[The fundamental right of
every person to become an owner is reflected in Article 17 of The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads:
- (1)
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association
with others.
- (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.]]
Through
the radical [[systemic]] transfer of economic and money power from
government to the citizens under a Capital Homestead Act, the party will
attract authentic leaders to run for offices at all levels. From political
independents and frustrated activists of other parties, the American
Revolutionary Party will seek out leaders who are willing to dedicate their
lives to serving, teaching, and empowering others. The American Revolutionary
Party will recreate from the ground-up the political order envisioned by America’s
revolutionary founders of "one nation under God, with liberty and justice
for all" or, in Lincoln's terms, "the last best hope of
mankind."
As part of a movement
respectful of civilization's most humanizing traditions, the Party can help
overcome the so-called “clash of civilizations” by bringing out the best of all
civilizations in their common understanding of justice as a necessary moral
framework for peace, freedom, and democracy. America, by launching for itself
the Second American Revolution based on these values, will serve as a model and
beacon of hope for every democratic nation seeking a free, just, and
life-enhancing future for its citizens.
We, in the spirit of America's
revolutionary founders, all of whom recognized that concentrated power is
inherently corrupting, will promote economic democracy as a key to effective
political democracy and freedom through the following:
q
Promote
Economic and Social Justice through the
Just Third Way
Consistent with traditional
principles of social and economic justice, the agenda of the American
Revolutionary Party will build a just market-based model of economic democracy,
resting on four policy pillars of the Just Third Way:
1. Democratize Capital Credit and Ownership
of Productive Assets, in order to promote full and
sustainable production, a life-enhancing environment, affordable shelter,
democratic and transparent corporate governance, and rising property incomes
for all. The moral omission of every economy on the globe is the indifference
of political leaders to exclusionary barriers faced by ordinary citizens and
the poor in gaining effective access to capital ownership and capital credit.
2.
Limit
the Economic Power of the State, in order to end
special privileges and monopolies, especially discriminatory access by already
wealthy people to the money-creation and credit powers of the Federal Reserve
System.
3.
Restore
Private Property Rights, especially in corporate equity
shares, by
reversing laws and court decisions that deny capital owners: (a) full voting
powers in corporate governance; (b) full transparency over management
decisions; and (c) access to full profit distributions. Discriminatory double-
and triple-taxation of corporate profits should be ended by full dividend
payouts, so that capital incomes will be taxed at the same rates as labor
incomes and new capital will be financed by the issuance of new shares to
workers and other new owners.
4.
Restore
Free Markets and Just Trade as
the most democratic means to determine just prices, just wages, and just
profits. This would eliminate monopolistic, bureaucratic, or other coercive or
unjust attempts to substitute centralized control over economic choices for the
more democratic, more objective and more efficient laws of supply and demand.
q
End Wage and Welfare Slavery through
Justice-Based Incomes for All
We will reform American
income distribution policy to shift from its present reliance on inflationary
wages, job-destroying employer benefits, and incomes dependent on
redistributing incomes earned by taxpayers. Instead, we will promote income
independence for every citizen by accelerating investment in new productive
assets in ways that widely broaden individual capital accumulations and
property incomes.
q
Expand Capital Ownership through
Capital Homesteading
We will enable every man,
woman and child from birth to set up a personal Capital Homestead Account at a
local bank and receive at least $3,000 [[$7,000]] of Fed-created,
interest-free, and insured capital credit every year throughout their lives.
Citizens could invest their Capital Homestead credit in newly issued growth
stock of an expanding American private sector, with such credit repayable
entirely with future profits derived from the added productiveness of capital
assets.
We will reduce Social
Security, Medicare and welfare benefits to the extent property incomes from
accumulated assets in a citizen’s Capital Homestead Account replace that
citizen’s dependency on incomes redistributed from other taxpaying workers and
capital owners. This would radically reduce the present value of estimated
future deficits for Medicare and Social Security, a mounting burden on future
generations now projected at $70 trillion, or a hidden debt of almost $250,000
on each man, woman, and child in America.
q
Lift Barriers to Universal Access to
Money Power and Broad-Based Ownership of Newly-Created Capital Assets
We will reactivate Section
13 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to supply asset-backed currency
through the discount windows of each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks in order
to: (a) promote sustainable, non-inflationary regional growth of industry,
commerce, and agriculture through Capital Homestead Accounts and (b)
de-monopolize the power of money, productive credit and ownership and
decentralize that power to every citizen through a local bank as a new right of
citizenship. Make each of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks owned and
governed by its regional citizens.
q
Create a Radically More Simple and Just
Tax System
We will control government
spending through a tax system designed to: (a) encourage accelerated rates of
investment, sustainable green growth in urban and rural communities, productive
jobs, and widespread ownership opportunities; (b) eliminate the double tax on
corporate profits and job-destroying Social Security, Medicare, and other
payroll taxes; [[(c) continue to fund all entitlements out of general revenues
until reduced and eventually exceeded by capital incomes earned through Capital
Homestead Account assets;]] (d) eliminate all individual income taxes below a
livable income exemption of $30,000 per adult and $20,000 per dependent, [or
$100,000 for a family of four]; and (e) balance the budget and gradually repay
old debt through a single [[individual]] income tax rate on all incomes above [[personal
exemptions]].
We will enable all citizens
to report their incomes from all sources on a postal card, while allowing
corporations, as with subchapter S corporations, partnerships, and cooperatives,
to avoid business income taxes by treating full dividend payouts and other
profit-based distributions as business deductions taxable when received at the
personal level.
We will provide citizens
whose incomes, including from private charity, are below the poverty line, with
a monthly voucher check to meet their basic subsistence needs until their
Capital Homesteading dividends and labor incomes rise above the poverty level.
q
Avoid Concentrations in Wealth
Transfers from One Generation to the Next
We will change inheritance
and gift taxes to encourage the top 5% of wealth-holders to distribute broadly
their capital accumulations from one generation to the next through Capital
Homestead Accounts of individual members of their families, workers, teachers,
the poor and disabled, and other propertyless citizens [[with little or
no income-producing assets]]. CHA accumulations of recipientsover $1 million
would be taxed to encourage rich donors to spread out their wealth.
We,
American Revolutionaries of the 21st Century, stand for the preservation of the
following social guidelines:
q
Promote Harmony in the Relationships
Between the Moral, Religious and Political Institutions
We will recognize and preserve the historic
role of religion in teaching universal moral virtues, deeply rooted in the
founding of America as a revolutionary nation. America’s unity, we also
reaffirm, was based on the freedom of every person to pursue his own religious
and spiritual life within a religiously pluralistic society, with no religious
authority put in a position where it could use the coercive powers of the state
to infringe on the freedom or spiritual lives of individuals, whether or not
they belong to any organized religion.
q
Strengthen the Family as the Basic
Social Institution of Society
We will elevate the needs and concerns
of the family (the basic social unit of any moral society) and the protection
of children to the highest national priorities in order to secure the perpetual
advance of human civilization.
q
Favor a Culture of Life and Citizen
Empowerment [[With Maximum Empowerment and Choice For All Citizens]]
Our Just Third Way economic
agenda would remove all economic rationalizations for having an abortion by
reforming the economic system to provide economic incentives to promote the
lives of expectant mothers and the unborn.
However, we will avoid both government coercion, on the one hand, and
taxpayer subsidies, on the other, to influence decisions on controversial issues
where citizens are sharply divided on moral or religious grounds, such as
abortion on demand. Such divisive issues
should instead be settled in the marketplace of moral ideas through the powers
of persuasion and reason, rather than through the force of government.
q
Fund and Encourage Educational Choice
and Responsibility of Parents
We will
offer educational vouchers to all families based on the (measured) educational
needs of each child, so that the primary responsibility and adequate resources
for exercising choice of schooling resides with parents, not with any monopoly
of educational services. Teachers, school administrators and teachers’ unions
would thus play a supportive and more empowering role in closing the
educational opportunity gap in the American educational system.
q
Enhance Lifetime Learning Opportunities
for all Citizens
Since political democracy assumes and
requires educated, informed, and independent thinking citizens, we will create
a cultural environment that enhances quality learning opportunities for all
citizens at all stages of their lives.
q
Support Private Universal Health
Insurance and Reduce Costs of Funding New Medical Advances
We will
encourage the private sector to offer universal catastrophic health care
insurance, reinforced with health care vouchers for health care insurance for
those who cannot afford it, and provide Capital Homesteading capital credit to
health plan subscribers and health plan providers – the only two groups with a
direct stake in quality health care. With access to low-cost capital credit and
direct ownership opportunities, these stakeholders would acquire control and
would become co-owners of comprehensive and competitive health care delivery
systems. A restoration of power to stakeholders would help restore the sacred
relationship between patients and their health providers that has been lost in
many of today’s [[Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs).]]
We will
condition all taxpayer-supported medical research financing support on
royalty-free licensing of all patentable inventions in order to stimulate
competition among suppliers and reduce the costs of producing pharmaceuticals
and other life-enhancing health technologies.
q
Discourage Judicial Activism that
Threatens a Just Constitutional Order
We will
encourage the judiciary to return to the original intent of the founders in
interpreting and ruling on the U.S. Constitution and discourage judges from
making laws that should be left to elected legislators or to the people by
referenda.
We will
seek rulings from the Supreme Court that restore the original meaning to the
Ninth Amendment and reinstate the rights and powers of the people under natural
law principles understood by the founders and pre-existing English common law,
including that of universal access to “the means of acquiring and possessing
property,” as acknowledged in the Virginia and Massachusetts Declarations of
Rights.
IV.
GLOBAL AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
q
Offer More Creative and Just Approaches
to Global Conflict Resolution
We will promote the Abraham
Federation for creating a democratic nation of capital owners as the
ultimate check on concentrated power, as a force to marginalize extremists, and
as an economic foundation for justice, stability and political democracy in [[the
West Bank/Gaza/Israel,]] Iraq, Afghanistan, and other world trouble spots.
q
Lead the World in Restoring A Fixed and
More Just Global Standard for Foreign Currency Exchange Rates to Avoid Wage
Arbitrage
We will convene a Second
Bretton Woods Conference to promote global monetary policies consistent with
principles of the Just Third Way, including adoption of a [[fixed global
standard for measuring the value of a]]
global reserve currency global monetary standard (beyond the gold
standard, [[based on the average global cost of producing]] to the cost of
a kilowatt-hour), [[while]] adjusting foreign currency exchange rates
[[for trade among countries]] so that they reflect the lowest market labor
rates in each country. This will create a level playing field in tradable goods
and services and stem the exploitative outsourcing of jobs to low-wage
countries and remove pressures for protectionist trade policies that hurt all
consumers.
q
Expand Global Markets for Commercial
Uses of Advanced U.S. Technologies
We will promote open global
markets to enable America to sell to developing countries high technology and
high-tech services that enhance civilized life for all, particularly in
sustainable food production; environmentally friendly Hydrogen-Age fuel cell
and solar technologies developed by NASA and other government agencies;
advanced information and health technologies; and consulting on Capital
Homesteading financing strategies and [[participatory]] Justice-Based
Management and Governance systems.
q
Help Accelerate Third World Development
and Debt Relief
We will export the social
technologies of the Second American Revolution and Capital Homesteading to all
nations to democratize and accelerate economic growth in developing economies,
neutralize and marginalize the preachers and teachers of global terrorism,
systematize greater transparency to reduce public corruption, and build
sustainable Just Third Way economies from the bottom-up.
We will cancel old debt to
developing countries that resulted from non-productive projects or that
enriched corrupt political leaders and their cronies at the expense of the
people.
q
Address Global Warming and Stewardship
of the Global Environment
We will create a ten-year
equivalent of the Marshall Plan or the "Race to the Moon" to conduct
research, development, and financing of advanced sustainable energy
technologies (many of which have already been developed by NASA and other
Federal agencies but have not yet been commercialized) that reduce the levels
of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from continued use of fossil fuels.
We will rapidly reduce
America’s dependency on oil and fossil fuels, so that existing reserves will
not be depleted before a “safety cushion” is left in the ground to handle
future emergencies within an increasingly more fragile and technologically
dependent world.
q
Transform the United Nations and Global
Politics to Spread Economic Democracy as a Pre-Condition for Spreading
Political Democracy Globally
We will use America's
superpower status by bringing together a coalition of free and democratic
countries supporting the Just Third Way to transform or replace the United
Nations as an instrument of global peace through global economic, social and
political justice.
q
Improve National Security by Winning
the War on Global Terrorism
We will strengthen and
transform the national security policy of America and its coalition partners by
launching, unilaterally or preemptively if necessary, a Just Third Way
offensive as the leading edge in the war of ideas, followed by more effective
bottom-up assistance from U.S. and international development agencies in
delivering a higher level of economic and social justice for poor and
underdeveloped countries to eliminate breeding grounds for recruiting extremist
religious and other terrorists.
We will limit American
military intervention as a last resort in winning the War on Global Terrorism.
Instead America should use its superpower military and economic status to lead
other nations in advancing world citizen-based global governance bodies and
Just Third Way initiatives within all developing countries. We should also
supply, unilaterally and preemptively if necessary, all forms of assistance to
revolutionary Just Third Way groups struggling to overcome genocidal dictatorships
that harbor terroristic threats to global peace.
FOR
FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Norm
Kurland, Co-Founder
Email:
info@americanrevolutionaryparty.us
Mail:
P.O. Box 40711, Washington, D.C. 20016
Phone:
(703) 243-5155 | Fax: (703) 243-5935|
