An impregnated, but hopefully not inflated, Call for Papers from the Populist Party of America and its affiliate, the Midwest Alliance of Populist America:

The Midwest Alliance of Populist America - a regional affiliate of the Populist Party of America - is now accepting submissions for consideration for inclusion in a new publication dedicated toward exploring Populist issues concerning the Midwest of the United States. The publication will be an electronic journal published on a monthly basis and disseminated through two modalities of distribution: posting on the Populist America Web domain; and direct electronic mailing to subscribers of the Populist America Newsletter.

One should note, this does not qualify as an academic journal, due its failure to conform with the ritualized processes of peer review. However, the absence of the homogenizing effects of peer review - which essentially amounts to the reinforcement of the lowest common denominator belonging to the respective discipline, allows the contributor the existential freedom to innovate himself or herself though the stylization of both the submission’s contents and the rhetorical devices deployed to make the argument convincing.

Although any document format will be accepted - other than texts that are formatted into images - we encourage you to either use XHTML with CSS or Rich Text Format. Additionally, please include a brief biographical description as well as an E-mail address that can be used to contact you. If published, you can typically expect 50 to 150 letters in reaction from those who were exposed to your work.

Please send your submission to russellcole@populistamerica.com (for Midwest Submissions), or mboldin@populistamerica.com (for PopulistAmerica.com submissions). If your work is published, it will be licensed under a Creative Commons, and you will be free to use your work for purposes of publicizing it in different venues as long as you give reference to its original membership in one of the publications under the control of the Populist Party of America.

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Background on the Midwest Alliance and the Populist Party of America:

The Populist Party of America is a third party political establishment - Federally registered - that advocates direct democratic reform in the United States. Direct democracy is a theory of governance that finds its inspiration in the form of polity practiced by the Ancient Athenians, who established a robust, egalitarian form of decision-making - in the context of the narrowly defined extension of citizenship - determining the adoption and implementation of public policy. Citizens of the Polis would collect in order to form an assemblage, where deliberations, involving public dialog, could take place; a modality of political discourse that would culminate in a majority rules vote - referendum - which determined whether a policy proposal would be adopted or discarded. Interestingly, the Assembly afforded any member the opportunity to address his counterparts. The only determining factor for whom could acquire the pulpit was the extent of the rhetorical skills possessed by the individual, who desired to orate his position regarding the affairs of the state.

Although this model of political organization was far from perfect according to our own contemporary standards, which we might anachronistically apply to the Athenians when rendering an assessment of the social justice instantiated by their political system; an evaluative process that would no doubt result in criticisms regarding the limited scope of citizenship in Athenian society; a condition that precluded women and slaves from engaging in the affairs of state, or, for that matter, social intercourse outside the sphere of domesticity, altogether.

Nevertheless, a rehabilitation of the concept, democracy - an exercise that would direct our attention to the etymology of democracy, which is situated in the Ancient Athenian Polis - continues to provide a heuristic benefit. We would subsequently be armed with an alternative conceptualization of democracy to juxtapose with the form of Liberal Representative Democracy - which many contend to be a contradiction in terms - that we so often, as Americans, ethnocentrically espouse as the only appropriate sociopolitical configuration for a society that desires to assume a developed, advanced status; a condition actualized through processes of social maturation.

This American discourse, which pronounces a universalistic conception of freedom and democracy in terms reflecting its own provincial embodiment can be interpreted according to a discursive pattern that runs in contradistinction to the prototypical expressions emanating from the American sociopolitical establishment: America’s insistence of Liberal Democracy as the manifestation of the positive normative qualities of humanity is merely a metropolitan discourse that defines the subjugated nations of neo-Liberal Empire according to their conformity or lack of conformity with the mandates imposed by the provincial economic interests of Empire.

By and large, the current understanding of democracy pervasive in America when juxtaposed to a properly rehabilitated conception of democracy has little in common with the Athenian form democratic political praxis. Furthermore, since political discourse within America tends to neglect to consider - even remotely - methods and recommendations by which to enhance democracy in America, since it is generally presumed that America has already achieved a state that embodies democracy in its highest possible development, a comparison with an alternative archetype of democracy will, perhaps, engender critical reflection that holds the neo-Liberal democratic nation-state to standards other than the ones it has defined for itself.

With all of this said, the Midwest Alliance of the Populist Party of America invites you to submit articles that address the subject of democracy - and the form it should properly assume - in the context of the American sociopolitical configuration both in the present and throughout its history.

regards,

Russell Cole

russellcole@populistamerica.com

Coordinator of the Midwest Populist Party

Tags: constitution, democracy, direct democracy, government, Midwest, midwest alliance, midwest populist party, National, politics, populist party, Russell Coles Blog, self governance
Categories: Commentary, Midwest, National, Populist Party, Democracy, constitution, government, Russell Cole's Blog, self-governance, Politics, Direct Democracy
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