Dear Darrow —

I agree with your objectives and consider me on board. Here is a recent thing I wrote about forming a new majority which is right in line with what you wrote here…. Take a look. Brad

A Letter from Dr. Blanton to Colleagues

If you have read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell or Nexus by Mark Buchanan, then you know that there is a new groundbreaking science of networks that applies to everything from physics and epidemiology to brain physiology and language, with the general name of complexity theory.

If you have read The Tao of Democracy by Tom Atlee or The World Café by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, you know that a series of social science breakthroughs in group communication have occurred that change everything. The breakthrough is from co-stupidity to co-intelligence in groups, using new structures of communication. The historically rare occurrences of consensus co-intelligent solutions to social problems could now possibly become commonplace. (I am attending a conference in Copenhagen in March to meet up with a bunch of these applied social scientists, mostly from Scandinavia, Canada and the U.S.) Anyway, there is now aborning amongst us a new form of deep democracy that demonstrates that 16 heads are better than one, and that real genius is possible—group genius—using this new technology. You can read about these things and it will make you jump up and down and holler. Or for a small fee and a little time and commitment you can learn by doing it with me, and jump up and down and holler with a bunch of other people, celebrating each other’s wisdom and our connection to humanity!

I am running for congress using complexity theory and citizens deliberative technology, and then I am going to help govern using co-intelligence and deep democracy in the form of citizens deliberative councils. I will win my campaign for congress by (1) accessing existing networks and (2) establishing a network of networks that transcends differences in beliefs, based on our links to each other at a level just a little deeper than belief. I am calling this the new communist plot! Oops! I mean, the new majority.

If you have ever seen the movie, Pay it Forward or have heard of “The Oracle of Kevin Bacon” or the concept of “6 Degrees of Separation,” you know something of this. The theory espoused in these examples is that if you pick anyone in some group, or in the United States at random, and they list everyone they know, and everyone they list, lists everyone they know, and you list everyone you know and they do the same, and you trace the connections, the odds are better than 50/50 that you know someone who knows someone who knows the person you picked. That is 3 degrees of separation. In fact, if you go so far as six of these links you discover that you are only six people away from almost anyone picked at random in the whole United States. The same is true in any sub population you pick. So, for example, if you sort through the five hundred thousand plus actors who have ever been in the movies, linking them to each other by movies they have been in together, and you pick one actor, say Kevin Bacon, to see how many steps away any one of them is from him, the average number of these links is 2.896. All but a few hundred out of half a million are 6 steps away or less, and not a single one is more than 10 steps away.

In the United States the social world is surprisingly small. I want to invite everyone into a somewhat smaller group. It will be an affiliation of acquaintances and friends, with a wide variety of opinions and perspectives, who focus on problem solving, using problems like health care, social security, campaign finance reform, etc. as an excuse to affiliate and be brilliant together. Citizens deliberative councils become the think tanks of government, and bring about the renewal of democracy through the dawning of co-intelligence, based on casual friendship and mutual commitment to problem solving. It is a background network relating existing networks, using “six degrees of separation” theory in a way that everyone can win. When we will have a new majority majority in congress, the government will reflect the brilliance of the network.

I am conducting a vital experiment for all of us and I am asking you to help me. Please make up a list of all your friends and send it to me, so I can send them this letter, and track their responses. If you will help me establish a connection with everyone you know, and give them an opportunity to establish a connection with others they would like to know, we can create and also make a map of what I am calling the new majority and, of course, I can win my race for congress as a minor side effect.

Don’t worry about whether people you list are a strong or a weak connection to you. In fact, it is the “weak connections” that makes up the strength of an overall network. Anyone you might say “Hi” to on the street, and they would answer back, will do.

Thanks! Brad

P.S. If you go for this, please do these things: (1) Sign the pledge. (2) Read the “letter to friends of Irma and Bob Caldwell” here that details my specific run for congress. (3) Make up a list of names of your friends and acquaintances and their contact information. (4) Send some amount of money to me, along with your list of names. (5) Give me permission to send the two letters and the pledge to each of your friends via email or post, but with the overall strategy letter addressed to them directly and the detailed campaign letter to their friends. (6) Jump up and down and holler. (7)

THE PLEDGE

I pledge allegiance to a new majority in support of Brad Blanton for Congress and the transformation of humanity through honest and open sharing. I support the assertion that human beings can be co-intelligent instead of co-stupid. I say that common values and views shared honestly, as well as honest disagreement, in the context of commitment, can create more brilliant mutually acceptable solutions to difficult problems than any individual intelligence. These are my friends and acquaintances. You can contact and tell them I told you to. Send them a copy of this pledge signed by me along with your letter about a new network of support for co-intelligence and deep democracy.

SIGNED:

Good luck brad! Here is some significant money! $_(Please contribute some amount between 1 and 2100 dollars, and make sure we have your address and occupation, which we need to keep track of for the SEC, who monitors campaigns.) Here is my network. If any of them tell you to leave them alone, leave them alone. Don’t give this out or sell it to anybody or I’ll get you for it: NAME ADDRESS EMAIL PHONE CELL PHONE. (Add as many pages as you like—and list as many people as you can think of. Thanks! Brad)

Dear Friends,

If you had a representative in our “representative” government really giving voice to your convictions, what would you want them to say?

Would you want someone with the courage of their convictions to speak the truth—absent political expediency? Would you want someone to be a champion for peace?

These are questions that I’ve dealt with deeply as a psychotherapist in Washington, D.C. for over 25 years, and are behind my decision to devote the remainder of my life to public service. I intend to use my professional expertise as an author, seminar leader and social scientist, and my devoted enthusiasm for honesty, to win a seat in Congress in District Seven in Virginia. I want to represent the voices of many people with a variety of perspectives, but whose values are at variance with those in the White House today.

I am selling my home and dedicating the next year of my life--and over $100,000 from my own (modest) pocket–to this work. I need your help to bring into being a new majority in my district and in the country. I want to invent, with your help, some new kind of affiliation out of mutual self interest that reaches across the ways of thinking we are used to, and then have that new majority reflected in Congress.

I think George Bush is wrong. Many of my Republican friends who initially supported him agree. Many who thought George Bush would be a true conservative are now asking, “What has he conserved? Money? No. Peace? No. The environment? No. Unity? No. Freedom? No.” So now we are asking together, an even more ominous question. “What has he depleted?”

Some of what we have lost is expressed Jimmy Carter’s new book, Our Endangered Values. The US is holding children as young as 8 years of age who have been captured in Afghanistan and Iraq in prison camps–including Guantanamo. Worse yet, Donald Rumsfeld knows about it and has known for quite some time, and continues to keep them there. "After visiting six of the twenty-five or so US prisons, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported registering 107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old.” The Journalist Seymour Hersh reported in May 2005 that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had received a report that there were "800-900 Pakistani boys age 13-15 in custody." The International Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the Pentagon have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse. In addition to personal testimony from children about physical and mental mistreatment, a report from Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib, described a visit to an eleven year old detainee in the cell block that housed high risk prisoners. The general recalled that the child was weeping, and "he told me he was almost twelve," and that "he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother." Children like this eleven year old have been denied the right to see their parents, a lawyer, or anyone else, and were not told why they were detained.

The people in our government have gone too far. These are not the values we stand for. This growing realization, along with a growing sense of nausea, is now growing a new majority.

There are other values we have been surprised to see transgressed: Starting a war under false pretenses, imprisoning people without recourse to the courts, arranging for people to be tortured here and in other countries—including innocent people. These actions clearly reflect a belief that the ends justify the means. Even if done in the name of a so-called “war on terrorism” —these are not the moral values we stand for. More and more of us are coming to see that the means create the ends. These means are too mean. Means that create more hurt and conflict and terror are contrary to creating peace. Jane Addams, (Nobel Peace Prize, 1931) said, "True peace is not merely the absence of war; it is the presence of justice."

The fundamental injustice of corporate favoritism over the health, happiness and common wealth of the people, is the source of many of these other injustices. The defense industry needs conflict to stay in business. An ever larger group of us are beginning to get this.

Congressman Eric Cantor still confesses to completely support the goals and methods of the Bush administration. Those of us who disagree think honesty is what’s been missing. We believe honesty leads to a new progressive conservative agenda. We believe a deeper level of honesty will allow all the people of the world to do a better job of conserving human, financial and natural resources, to everyone’s mutual benefit. Trust is built through openness, not secrecy. Allies, who tell and are told the truth, rather than being manipulated with false evidence, provide the best mutual security.

Here is a brief history of my short political career. With a little help from my friends in 2004 I got my name on the ballot for Congress and we got over 24% of the vote. We spent only $4000 on the whole campaign. Even though nobody really knew anything about me, a quarter of the voters in the district, even back then, didn’t want to vote for an incumbent Bush Republican.

Since then a lot more has come out about lying and secrecy and illegal activity by Bush loyalists. I expect to be one of the replacements that will change the balance of power in Congress. My main base of support in District Seven is Independents, who vote for the person, not the party. With no Democrat in the race, many loyal Democrats are also my enthusiastic supporters. A growing number of Republicans now agree that the priorities of the Bush administration are not really the moral values we stand for. When I am elected in November, I won’t be alone. People opposing the current administration will likely be the new majority in both houses in 2006. We will create solutions based on a new perspective, put some constraint on the last two years of the Bush administration, and possibly remove Bush and Cheney from office.