Please explain. My take is simply that there is no need for two leftwing, big government, small liberty parties. Unrepresented people will go elsewhere. Obviously your analysis is more complex and I would like to understand it.
Hi Psalm144, sorry for taking so long to respond.
Sure thing - what I'm referring to comes from chaos theory, which despite the term, doesn't actually mean you are creating chaos. Rather, chaos theory deals with dynamic systems that are extremely complex - systems where you can have millions, billions, or more units all engaged in activity at the same time, and which results in interactions that are simply too complex to model individually. Chaos theory (or complex dynamics) applies to systems as widely disparate as the onset of turbulence in a flowing liquid to the interaction of air masses that generate weather to the growth of biological populations in a real-world setting to the economic decisions made by millions in a free market. There is an underlying universality to dynamic systems that makes them behave in similar ways (but ones in which they never quite repeat themselves, hece they display aperiodicity), so that the same sets of equations can apply to them all. These systems can begin to display patterns of near-repetition that follow various numeric patterns.
At the macro level, when you add "energy" to a system, you can get a linear system to cross a threshold into being a non-linear dynamic (chaos) system. If you push the flow of a liquid to a fast enough point, your smooth and even flow begins to generate turbulent behaviour. If you increase the rate at which a biological population reproduces, you begin to get non-linear chaotic behaviour in the rise and fall of this population. You can begin to get bifurcations and bifurcations upon bifurcations that can actually be graphed out - bounded regions where within one region, one dynamic of behaviour takes place, but when you cross a boundary, another set of dynamic behaviours are displayed. If you graph out the underlying equations themselves and run them versus time, you will get situations where the results will continually move and circle between two or more "strange" attractors, while never quite completely replicate their former paths. Nevertheless, the results can begin to attach themselves to these attractors, which act as "wells" into which the system sorta-kinda wants to fall, but doesn't as long as it remains non-linear and dynamic.
My theory that I expressed above is that our political system is, or could be made to be, a non-linear dynamic system, since it is the sum total of billions of political decisions being made by millions of individual actors acting in aggregate. If this were to happen, our system might be able to "jump" from its current attractor to a new one - the idea being that we can "jump" from the current New Deal-era "big government can solve all our problems" assumption type of system (which both major parties implicitly accept, even if not every member of them does)
I pointed out that there seems to be a numerical pattern attached to the American political system that is moving on a 1-3-5-7-9 pattern, starting at the point in the colonial period where we were really and truly beginning to be a self-governing, self-directing political entity (which was before the Revolution). At each point, there has been "energy" (in the form of political anger, the shock of external events, etc. that has caused our system to "jump" to a new attractor.
Starting around the mid-1760s, we saw the end of the French and Indian War, which relieved the colonies of the necessity of looking to the British army and government for our immediate protection. As such, we could begin to more easily contemplate an independent political existence.
~10 years later, in the mid-1770s, our issues with the British came to a head (Boston Tea Party, the Boston massacre, etc.), and we fought a revolution, resulting in a very different attractor - that of independent existence as a representative Republic.
~30 years later, in the early-to-mid 1800s (the decade), the shock of the Federalist efforts to sustain the Alien and Sedition Act ended up more or less destroying that party, and Jefferson's Republicans took power, which was really a new political order that lasted throughout the Era of Good Feelings, as we had a virtual uniparty rule for over a decade.
~50 years later, in the mid-to-late 1850s, we saw the issue of slavery come to a head, and the massive shock of the Civil War.
~70 later, in the mid-1930s, we saw the shock of the Great Depression and the rise of the New Deal state.
Here it is, ~90 years after, and we find ourselves in a massive social and especially fiscal crisis (debt, spending, bankruptcy) and the political "energy" is building once again.
After each previous bifurcation and "jump," elements of the previous political reality disappeared or were severely weakened. After the Revolution, British authority in America was swept away. During the Era of Good Feelings, the Federalists were wiped out and they only slowly recoalesced. In the time right before the Civil War, the Whigs disappeared as a Party. In the 1930s, the GOP *almost* disappeared, and was so weakened that in many cases it was practically a regional party.
After each shock, the system gradually re-establishes itself in a new equilibrium, and trucks on to the next break point.
I contend that we're seeing energy build that is going to put us into a non-linear dynamic system, and conservatives need to act to make sure that we can get it to drop into a more liberty-friendly attractor. We better get it right, because if I'm right, we won't have another chance for ~110 after it happens this time!
I hope this adequately explains my view!
Forgot to clarify - I realise that we’re not quite to 90 years after the 1930s...I would expect that our upcoming breakpoint would take place more around 2016 or 2020 than it will now. However, the pattern doesn’t seem to have to be *strictly* 10-30-50-70-90. Because it’s a dynamic system, there can be a little “play” involved.