Letter To ‘Washington Bus’

Email to political organization Washington Bus regarding their (in my opinion) misguided goals:

From: Cameron Newland
to: info@washingtonbus.org
Mon, Apr 27, 2009, 5:08 PM
subject: Issues: What We Stand For

I went to a WashingtonBus event last week at Moe Bar, and my friend and I enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. People there who knew what The Bus was (I didn’t) said it was a sort of non-partisan organization that advocated young people getting involved in politics. I just checked out your website, and upon looking at the Issues: What We Stand For page, I saw some things that I believe need correcting (lest someone else like me comes to your site looking to join and reads some things that they don’t agree with and promptly leaves your site without dropping you an email detailing their concerns).

First, the Issues page looks very partisan. In fact, it sounds really socialist/liberal. You don’t want it to look like that, because that limits your audience as an organization. It will turn people off who don’t agree, and they won’t ever join.

The Health Care blurb was brief, nondescript, and perfect. Everyone can agree with what you said there. Kudos.

The Environment statement is something I would definitely advocate changing. Why? It seems to suggest that pollutants/emissions are the only enemy when it comes to environmental stewardship. That’s not true at all, in fact, the real driver of environmental change is population, not pollution. More pollution is a byproduct of more population. Pollution can certainly be reduced, but if you were serious about decreasing our footprint on the planet, you’d advocate reducing population before you advocated stricter emissions laws. I suggest you either broaden the list of enemies to the environment by adding ‘untenable/irresponsible population’, or otherwise rewording the Environment statement so that it doesn’t single-out emissions/pollution.

The Economic Justice portion should be stricken from the manifesto completely. Why? Equality is never going to happen, ever. It’s a romantic idea, but it can only come with communism (also a romantic idea), and communism fails in practice. What you should replace Economic Justice with is something like ‘Equal Opportunities for All’ with regard to education/jobs/advancement. That would indicate that you’re pro-fairness and not pro-pipedream, which is currently the case (when you seek vaguely-defined ‘justice’, a noble aim that is impossible to attain).

On the Equal Rights portion, kudos! I couldn’t have said it better myself! Ditto Election Reform. Pat yourselves on the back.

The A+ Education statement needs work. The biggest problem with it is that it advocates ‘better funding’. I don’t know what ‘better funding’ is. Your readers probably don’t, either. If ‘better funding’ is federal/state/local money to support innovative charter schools, then I would say I support ‘better funding’. If, by ‘better funding’, you mean more funding, then I would say you’re absolutely wrong. Throwing money at a poorly-designed, antiquated system is money wasted. The biggest issue today with primary education is that we don’t really have free choice. There is a Soviet-style government monopoly on education (tax money for schools only goes to government-administered schools). Our public schools, unable to thrive in a competitive environment, fail to innovate and fail to educate our children up to the level at which they could be. The future of education, the way we can improve our children’s education, is to make our primary education system function like our thriving higher-education system (which, I might add, is the envy of the world). If government money supported the best-performing schools instead of only government-run schools, our children (and our economy) would be much better-off. I attended Bellevue High School and the UW, and had an AMAZING, SUPERIOR education (100% in public schools). Most pupils in public institutions are not so lucky–I’m the exception to the rule, and I know it.

My last critique is that there is nothing on there about liberties. Rights, yes, but not liberties. Our freedom from undue regulation is what makes our country so great and so productive. Government shouldn’t stand in the way of any of us. In fact, government’s only reason for existence is to 1) arbitrate between people when one is being wronged (ensuring fairness with a justice system), 2) to maintain order, and 3) to build things that we might not build on our own, like roads, or a national defense. Because the group’s manifesto seems so liberal (definitions of liberal include favors political philosophy of progress, reform, protection of civil liberties; and a broad array of related ideas of government that consider individual liberty to be the most important political goal) you should surely include something in there about freedom from undue regulation, essentially favoring no government action unless it’s absolutely necessary to protect fairness/maintain order/provide something that we wouldn’t on our own.

I’d love it if any or all of this could somehow make it into the Issues page. Reflect on it, at least. Remember, for every thoughtful letter you receive, 100 have come and gone thinking the same, yet wrote you nothing.

-Cameron Newland