Five American parties on war and peace

The political platform of a political party is not binding on its candidates, but it is significant because it reflects what people who are most active in the party would like to see happen.

Since I think Americans should be open to voting for small political parties as well as large parties, I look at what the top five parties advocate concerning war and peace, which I think is the most important issue.

To sum them up:

• The Democratic Party says it wants peace, but that it is threatened by ISIS, Syria, Russia, North Korea and others.
• The Republican Party says peace is threatened by ISIS, Syria, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and others, and no limitations should be placed on possible U.S. military action.
• The Libertarian Party opposes military intervention and “entangling alliances” and believes in armed neutrality, like Switzerland’s.
• The Green Party thinks the USA should be guided by the United Nations charter and only engage in military action when authorized by the UN Security Council.
• The Constitution Party opposes undeclared wars, treaties that commit the United States to military action and membership in the United Nations and other international bodies.

None of these is exactly what I think.   I’m somewhere between the Democrats (their platform, that is) and the Libertarians and Constitutionists.

∞∞∞

Below is a slightly more detailed summary of the party platforms, with my comments.

The five major parties and their candidates

As my friend John (Jack) Belli points out, five major parties are running candidates in this year’s election.

The five parties are the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties.   They are “major” parties because their presidential candidates are on the ballots in at least 20 states and could in principle win a majority of the electoral votes.

In this post, I merely provide Wikipedia links to the five major parties and their candidates, as basic and more-or-less neutral sources of information.  The links show that the three small parties are not only different from the two large parties, but very different from each other.  In subsequent posts, I’ll compare and contrast their platforms on important issues.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY

For President: Hillary Clinton.

For Vice-President: Tim Kaine.

REPUPLICAN PARTY

For President: Donald Trump.

For Vice-President: Mike Pence.

LIBERTARIAN PARTY

For President: Gary Johnson.

For Vice-President: William Weld.

GREEN PARTY

For President: Jill Stein.

For Vice-President: Ajamu Baraka.

CONSTITUTION PARTY

 For President: Darrell Castle.

For Vice-President: Scott N. Bradley.

The other Presidential debate

Four Presidential candidates—Jill Stein of the Green Party, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party—had their own debate in Chicago the other night.

They were amateurish as performers.  Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could have done a better job than any of them of playing a President on TV or in the movies.  But they got into the substance of issues.  And for all their differences, they did agree on following the Constitution instead of fighting undeclared wars or locking people up without criminal charges.

Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson and Gary Johnson, but not Virgil Goode, agreed on the futility of the current war on drugs, and called for legalization of marijuana.  Stein and Anderson called for an expansion of the U.S. welfare state, while Johnson and Goode want to roll it back in order to balance the federal budget.

The last question they were asked was how they would amend the Constitution if they could.  Anderson would enact a gay rights amendment, Johnson and Goode would enact a congressional term limits amendment, and Stein would enact an amendment that stated spending money is not free speech, and corporations are not people.  Goode agreed with the latter, but said it would only require a congressional resolution.

Based on the debate, I now think I will vote for Jill Stein.

Click on Shift-Alt-Debate for Conor Friedersdorf’s thoughts on the alternate debate.

The debate was carried by the RT network, a Russian-owned English-language news network that broadcasts to the United States, and (I understand) by C-SPAN.