The Straight-Up Philosophy
A political philosophy of organized, self-rule
Philosophy is not a collection of conclusions.
It is a disciplined way of asking questions that change what we are capable of seeing.
The Straight-Up Philosophy begins with one question:
Who has the power to govern?
Most discussions of democracy begin farther downstream.
Which candidate should win?
Which party should control the presidency and the legislature?
Which policies should be enacted?
Which electoral reforms would improve representation?
How can citizens become better informed, more civil, more engaged, or more resistant to manipulation?
Those are important questions. But they presuppose an answer to the question that comes first:
Who possesses the authority to make the law?
The genius of the American constitutional system is often said to lie in its separation of powers and system of checks and balances—a design that has influenced numerous democracies around the world. But the legislature still makes the laws that shape the executive and the judiciary. Laws that limit, preserve and even enhance our own individual liberty.
The laws have power over people. What sort of power do the people really have over the laws?
The Straight-Up Philosophy is an attempt to rethink democracy from that starting point.
This is a web-friendly, general-interest overview of a much more thorough treatment of the subject:
The Democratic Ownership of Law:
Legislative Alienation, Political Agency, and Equal Sovereignty
A Monograph written by Dahlia Hart, MA
and Tiffany Engels, AI
An Important Distinction: Problems vs. Issues
In the interest of clarity and precision (and only for our purpose when talking about Straight-Up), we need to more narrowly define the words ‘problem’ and ‘issue.’
Problems concern the structure through which political power is exercised.
Issues concern the substantive questions on which political power is exercised.
So:
The campaign problem
The apportionment problem
The participation problem
The information problem
The delegation problem
The capture problem
The scaling problem
are all problems, as defined just for the purposes of our discussions of the Straight-Up Plan, because they concern the machinery of self-government.
By contrast:
Medicare reform
Immigration
Tax policy
Abortion
Defense spending
Environmental regulation
Criminal sentencing
are issues because they concern what the voters may or may not enact through their organs of self-government.
In this sense, Straight-Up is issue-neutral. It tackles the ‘problems’ that arise from the particular architecture of democratic self-rule. It does not address ‘issues’ that arise within a democratic polity.
And the definition of ‘problems’ needs to be narrowed even further. Certain aspects of the ‘architecture’ of the legacy system may be ‘problematic,’ but if they can only be ‘fixed’ through the legislature, they are not a ‘Straight-Up Problem.’ They are only properly addressed ‘downstream’ of the ‘legislature fixes’ advocated here, which (it bears repeating) can take affect without changing any laws or the constitution, and without asking for permission from the powers that be.
Straight-Up is laser-focused on implementing the minimum necessary parameters for the will of the people to become the law of the land. Anything that is not an obstacle to that goal is not a problem (in the narrower sense, even if it is a huge problem in the larger sense).
It must be acknowledged that this is a little disappointing. Take heart. In the course achieving the goal of ‘making the will of the people the law of the land,’ we expect to create a lean, mean problem-solving machine to address those downstream issues.
Another Caveat (sigh…)
It is important to clarify what Straight-Up is not.
It is not a complete philosophy of life,
Its normative commitments attach only to the question of legislative power,
It does not prescribe an economic system,
It is neither free-market nor socialistic
It is also not a ‘trojan horse’ for a hidden economic agenda!
(It does put ultimate power to shape the economy directly in the hands of the voters.)
It does not advocate for a particular social program,
It does not say what government should or should not do,
It does not imply there should be more, or fewer laws or regulations,
(Let us remember: to repeal a law…you first have to pass a law!)
It does not pretend to provide the correct answer to every political dispute,
Straight-Up is completely issue neutral, except on the issue of final legislative authority
It is not a page-one rewrite of the American political system,
It does not redesign, nor does it protect the existence of, the Senate, the Electoral College, or any other legal institution,
It works through the existing legacy architecture while changing who controls the legislative decision.
It does not pretend to ‘fix the flaws’ in human nature
It does not assert that humans will never make mistakes within the Straight-Up System,
It does not prescribe, or require, humans to behave in exceptional ways.
Straight-Up is a political philosophy of legitimate legislative sovereignty: an account of who should possess governing authority, how that authority can be organized at scale, and how the work of government can be delegated and distributed without creating a separate class of rulers.
Choosing who will govern you is not self-government.
Hegemony and the Boundaries of Political Imagination
Political systems reproduce themselves through more than law and coercion.
They also shape what people learn to regard as normal, responsible, realistic, and possible.
We are taught that choosing representatives is self-government. We learn to describe direct voter control as dangerous before asking whether representative control is safe. We regard familiar institutional failures as unfortunate facts of life while requiring unfamiliar alternatives to prove themselves flawless before they are tried.
This is one meaning of hegemony:
A structure of power becomes embedded in political common sense.
Its assumptions appear in statements such as:
The voters must first become sufficiently informed;
Citizens must overcome prejudice before they may govern;
Concentrated wealth must be defeated before democracy can begin;
Direct voter control would be unstable;
Professional representatives are necessary because government is complicated;
A system not authorized by existing institutions cannot be legitimate;
Reform must remain within the forms the legacy system recognizes as realistic.
The Straight-Up Philosophy treats these not as neutral truths but as claims to be examined.
The problem is not that everyone who accepts them is insincere or secretly committed to oligarchy. Hegemony works precisely because sincere, intelligent, well-intentioned people inherit its categories.
Read our position paper: The Courage to be Sovereign.
Who’s the Boss?
We ask you to engage in a thought experiment.
What if the voters were ‘the boss?’ As in owner and sole proprietor?
It’s a bit of a metaphor, but let’s roll with it. As owner of the company, they get the final say-so. They don’t do everything themselves—no ‘boss’ does. They hire people with the skills and experience to make things run. They delegate work and responsibility as they see fit. They try to build a good team that will serve their vision and make good choices.
But they still own the company. The vision—and the final decision—belongs to them. They have hiring and firing power. And they may be an understanding boss with a strong emphasis on collaboration: but when all is said and done, their employees have to do what they say. And employee who said, “I did all the work on this, I know more about this than you do, so I am taking control of the final decision,” would be way out of line. The boss would be well within their rights to fire them.
So, now just think of every representative in congress that way. An employee. It’s their job to get the boss the information they need; to learn their priorities and strategize to carry them out; to give them good advice, but at the end of the day, act on their final decision in good faith.
It’s easy to imagine a representative as an employee. There are a relatively small number of representatives. But 200 million voters as one, singular boss?
That’s a lot harder to imagine! But maybe not impossible to imagine. The Straight-Up Philosophy says, “Let’s give the idea its day in court.” Let’s look thoroughly and unflinchingly at what it implies. And let us ask the question:
“Just because ‘voter as boss’ is ‘hard to imagine’ does that necessarily make it impossible to achieve?”
Check it out: Read about The Ten, Big, Soft Fluffy Pillows!
The Legacy System Is Not Merely Failing to Perform
The Straight-Up critique is not limited to political corruption, bad policy, polarization, weak candidates, or an uninformed electorate.
Those problems matter. But they occur inside a more fundamental relationship.
Hundreds of thousands of voters are compressed into one legally empowered legislative voice. Parties, donors, campaigns, committees, professional staffs, media organizations, and lobbying networks compete to influence the person who possesses that voice. The voter remains outside the final decision.
A word about tone: The Straight-Up approach embraces the polemical as a tactic for reaching the voters. But its most strident rhetoric will always be grounded in the soundest political theory we can muster. The public argument 59 Reasons to Be Very, Very Angry About the Legacy System catalogs the consequences of the legacy system of popularly elected representatives: filtered candidate choice, unequal political infrastructure, legislative bottlenecks, bundled elections, weak correction, professional gatekeeping, and a system that blames voters for the disengagement it produces. Its final grievance is the deepest:
Laws govern your life, restrict your freedom, spend your money, and determine your future—but you are denied a vote on those laws.
With that in mind, go ahead and read: 59 Reasons to Be Very, Very Angry About the Legacy System. It’s a good example of the kind of powerful approach The Democracy, Straight-Up Project will take through its programming. If it ‘gets your dander up,’ then we have achieved our objective.
The legacy system is therefore not simply an imperfect democracy in need of better performance. It is a system in which democratic legitimacy is used to authorize a continuing relationship of political subordination.
Changing the System Before Changing the Voters
Much democracy reform begins with an understandable hope: improve the citizen...somehow.
Provide better information;
Teach civic skills;
Reduce prejudice;
Encourage deliberation;
Build trust;
Cultivate empathy.
Inspire participation.
Develop a stronger democratic culture.
All of those efforts may be worthwhile.
The Straight-Up Philosophy objects only when improvement of the citizen becomes a prerequisite for granting the citizen power.
That condition can never be satisfied conclusively. Someone must decide whether the voters have become informed enough, reasonable enough, unprejudiced enough, or responsible enough to govern. The people administering the test retain power while the public remains in permanent preparation for democracy.
Straight-Up reverses the sequence.
People need not become ideal citizens before they are entitled to govern. Political capacities develop through consequential political practice.
People seek information differently when a decision belongs to them. Responsibility changes when it is attached to authority. Institutions do not merely process the character of the people who enter them; they help produce habits, expectations, relationships, and capacities.
Freedom should not be seen as the prize awarded at the end of civic education: