One way to understand an organization is to reference its Mission, Vision, and Values. So let’s take a moment to do that with the Benjamin Franklin Party.
In the interest of time, we’ll cover Mission and Vision today and save Values for a future post or posts.
The Benjamin Franklin Party’s Mission is:
We are rebuilding and improving the productive common ground in American politics.
It’s no secret that we are living in polarized and divided times. But it hasn’t always been that way. While America has always had high ideals, we haven’t always been as inflexible in our political ideologies as we are today. It used to be that the common ground was the common good for all. And to achieve that common good, it was understood that there would need to be some give-and-take.
What’s made compromise difficult recently has partly to do with the nature of ideology itself, where you have an answer – whether politically it be small government, big government, individualism, or communitarianism – before you even start discussing the problem or question at hand.
Ideologies are philosophies, and if the philosophies are mutually exclusive and inflexibly held, then the result is gridlock.
So how can we as Americans get back to a productive common ground? That leads us to the Vision statement of the Benjamin Franklin Party.
Our Vision is:
We see a United States where evidence-based governance produces and protects the highest standard of living for all Americans.
Unlike ideologies and philosophies – where there are many competing narratives about how the world works – focusing on evidence helps us sort through all these stories to see which ones, in which situations, actually produce the results they promise.
Because philosophies and ideologies are limited only by human imagination, the number of conflicting ideologies is potentially endless. But throughout all that confusion, there is one simple truth worth remembering – a lighthouse beacon to guide our way – and that is this: Reality is never in conflict with itself.
That is because reality is a shared common ground. Science is by design a reality-seeking activity, so if we focus on science-based solutions to problems, rather than comforting-but-unfounded stories, we will get to effective solutions much more quickly and painlessly.
From a political point of view, it comes down to whether we want to be governed by fiction or nonfiction.
The Benjamin Franklin Party is neither conservative nor liberal. We are simply factual.
And the one question we should all be asking is, if we are not being governed by our proven best ideas, then how are we being governed?
Yours in republic keeping,
James Carroll
BFPNC Chair