18 Paragraphs YOU WILL READ

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ladies and Gentlemen of the party, I come before you today to speak on our primary purpose, what we must do and how we must navigate a path forward towards eventually leading this nation once again.

The Federalist Party was founded primarily for two major reasons. It was founded as a big tent conservative party to bring back competition and ensure a competing right of center voice to then dominant Liberal Party and its erstwhile allies the Labor Party. At the time elections were not competitive and in the last election, the right of center ticket placed third against the Liberals and Labor.

It was also founded to preserve the victories of the Regional Rights movement that began in 2008, and manifested mostly via the Regional Protection Party through the time of its dissolution in February 2012, and as such committed to the preservation of the Regions and the balanced Federal Republic that it thus ensured would continue to exist.

The continuance of the Federalist Party, and thus the regional rights movement that it thus inherited, is not a subject for debate. It will continue and we will continue to protect our balanced Federal Republican from both the extremes of centralized power in a unitary state and we will also equally and just as strenuously opposed the weakness and chaos inherent any weak confederacy or confederation.

We don't support these things for the sake of balance or for the sake of federalism, we support the balance provided by federalism because they are necessary to preserve and protect our natural God given rights enshrined in Article I of the Constitution and that any system that is either powerful enough to deprive us of these rights or too weak to protect these rights from threats foreign or domestic is a system that is not worthy of being instituted. The government does not give you your rights, nor does the government give you your freedom you are born free with natural and inalienable rights.

When it comes to reforms, we must pursue reforms that strengthen and improve the institutions and structures that exist so that they perform their role within that balanced dynamic better, but we shall never support any reform that moves us more towards the centralism of a unitary state or more towards the separatism and anarchic chaos of confederation and secessionism.

The individual must be therefore empowered in both political and economic considerations. They must be able to choose between a variety of competing options on a free and open market, without the monopoly of an oppressive government or the government in all but name that a private sector monopoly almost inevitably entails.

We must strengthen and facilitate the development of strong families in our economic and tax policies and ensure that we incentivize hard work, betterment, empowerment and economic self-dependence. While our policies should never revel in the intoxicating chaos of radical upheaval to achieve desired objectives regardless of short term consequences, we should strive to reduce dependence and replace the benefit cliff with the gradual reduction of the sliding scale.

We need to strengthen communities with economic policies that promote all regions of the country, and with regional level policies that work to improve education, development and infrastructure with the Federal Government standing in the role of the supportive partner rather than the dictatorial overlord. Our polices on crime must reflect our principles and while doing all practical to protect the people and their safety, must work to protect people's freedom and individual rights as much as they are protecting their safety.

We must recognize that we can do all to material guard our safety and independence while surrendering it at the same time if we don't approach matters of government finance responsibly, therefore responsible finance must be a critical priority, lest we become the pawns of foreign powers, despots and oil Sheiks using their treasury notes to force our hands in geopolitical disputes and questions human rights. As Edmund Burke said, "the government can claim no estate, that which is not drawn on the public estate". All of the government's money is either taxed directly from the people, borrowed at interest against the people or printed away at inflation against the people. As such the government should pay for all new long term spending with dedicated revenues streams, and work to minimize the deficit as much as possible.

When it comes to our national security, we should be restrained yet operate from a position of strength. We should not operate from a position of weakness, but strength comes not only on the first line of defense and were we to buy the best military in the world financed by China like some new truck with a massive loan to the bank, is really our defense anymore? Our objective should be the maintenance of peace unless all other avenues for peace have been thoroughly exhausted. No nation on earth has found itself wealthier, stronger or better off for having engaged in a war. War by nature expends resources, it consumes its people and it leaves the world worse off, it leaves communities disrupted and families torn apart. So while it is indeed true that peace comes from strength, strength is inevitably derived from the maintenance of peace.

We find ourselves fighting for causes and principles that the party has generally always fought for, often times with varying ideological tilts towards either populism or libertarianism but generally speaking the broader issues of federalism, regions taking the lead, individual liberty, market competition, responsible finance and a restrained foreign policy have not and will not be changed and we welcome anyone who supports most of these causes to join us.

We as a party must reject the the clarion call for radicalization in opposition to perceived radicalism on the other side. Years back, when this game faced down the Radical movement, it was the Federalist Party, that first stood up and resisted the selective exclusion that was manifest in that movement. Today, we must likewise resist the urge to stoop to anyone's level and instead stand up for the values and principles that will guide us through this storm just like it has any other. We are not radicals, we are not extremists, we are federalists, and we should not let the desire to respond in kind cause us to waver in those values, alienate our natural allies, and render us weaker and further divided when our cause is just, noble and right.

As a game, we have got to restore civic engagement and participation, we must bring renewal to the Atlas Fantasy Elections board and since we don't have much influence in government, we should thus make our home in AFE. We have to treat discord responsibly, using it as a tool for organization, but for organization that should thus occur in public and on display. If we are to get back anywhere near power, we must defined Atlasian Conservatism along the lines described above, break free of the fear, weakness and rank stupidity of the RL conservative movement and work to a build something special and fun in Atlasia once again.

I know I have said it so many times before, but the legwork matters, the engagement matters, the speeches matters. Even if 75% of this game is now a zombie army, even if it won't change a single vote, this game is only going to change when someone steps up and takes the lead on making that shift a reality. To this end, I applaud the work so far of the ModFed Caucus, but we must do more, more civic activism and engagement in advancement of our principles and causes, if we want to gain and hold more membership. We need to work in unorthodox places, break down barriers of perception and work to rebuild interest, trust and a desire to remain and participate as opposed to leaving and retreating into the darkest cliques of Discord. We need a revolution in actions and mindset that cannot be legislated or amended into being, a fundamental shift that has to begin with one, two, three people and then spreads like wildfire across the land.

I know I have said all of these things before and people have said they agree with all or most of them, yet it doesn't happen. If you want to see the game improved, and the right start clawing its way back to power, then it is time to truly heed my words and time to truly start taking action to bring about the kind of game that we want. No one else is going to do it for us, we have to make the decision individually to come as a group and do these things. We must be bold yet reasonable, impassioned yet restrained.

I want people to think of the Federalist Party as a responsible right, committed to the Federal Republic, strong and vibrant regions, against monopoly (gov't and private), in favor of responsible finance and a restrained foreign policy. I also want people to view the Federalist Party as the party that led the way in revitalizing civic participation and citizen engagement in government. There can and must be more to this game then discord dming/PMing your way to victory on the mass leftist hoard, and I call on all Federalists to bring that to reality.

Thanks for your time and with that I declare for the position of Federalist Party Chair and humbly request your support.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I say this with love but I can't let the federalists take all the credit for defeating the radicals; I seem to recall a certain Labor Senate Speaker helped run the bandits out of town.

My reference to the radicals deals more with exclusivity of the game then the actual struggle itself in 2015, more specifically the platform change I made in 2014 and the whole "Welcoming Atlasia" thing that stemmed from it over the ensuing years. Its a back handed way of saying we need to expand our tent, while cloaking it in terms of tradition and conservatism.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

To offer some advice for the federalists & to promote election board activity here are my thoughts.

It's valiant for Yankee to run for Chair but it's a thankless, painful and challenging job when you're winning with a good team; let alone in present circumstances the party faces. These thoughts aren't even about your leadership Yankee but rather the problems facing the party

When Labor was in a similar rut I learnt some lessons.

1.) Don't accept whoever turns up at the door: This doesnt' seem like a huge problem anymore but some of the most painful episodes on all sides in Atlasia have been when parties accept people who reguarly change party, who betray allies, who are abrasive and who don't have any idea how to plan ahead- in Labor we worked out we were better as a small team we could trust, rather than a large team we couldn't.

2.) Have an ideology: Ideology inspires people, it makes them get involded and it makes them want to win; we always had a broad degree of social democrats, social liberals, progressives, democratic socialists, eco-socialists & the odd blue dog in Labour- but our general ideology stacked up together & bound us together in common cause. This is the easy part but I still don't know what the federalist ideology for 2020 is? Especially Yankee when to be charitable you're talking about ideoligical events that happened years before even I joined Atlasia!

3.) Have an agenda- you can't have an agenda if you lack an ideology. In my house terms we got a lot done because I knew in advance what the Pericles Adminstration & Labor agenda was. If a federalist president got elected with a federalist majority I don't know what they'd do? Scrap the anti-Mexico City policy? Honestly beyond some piecemeal abortion legislation I don't know what it would be?

4.) Plan the Ticket for President in October- feel free to quote this when Labor lose in October but if you want something to plan, rally around & have fun then get someone to run who is a federalist. It's now been the case for three cycles that there is not a unified federalist ticket; some sort of backroom falling out (I assume?) meant that ReaganClinton got stopped in 'Oct from running when he was the strongest choice & then the last two cycles you've supported people purely because they're not Labour.  Siren is great & ran a good detailed campaign but honestly what did the federalist party gain from that ticket? The problem the party faces with endorsing these hybrid tickets is that once it loses you're back at stage one.

5.) The Brand- Is the Federalist Party the best name, the best vehicle & the best organsiation for beating Labor? If there is a chance that a new name, a new structure, a new party, a new strategy or even an ideological pivot would work then surely you should do it? I know I'm stepping on the hornets nest with this one but I wonder if problems 3 & 4 stem from the need for a huge makeover?

I also find it weird there isn't some sort of Clause 4 moment in the party or internal schism in the party (at least on the election board) There's no fight. Internal divison can be a sign of a weak party but it's also a sign of a healthy party that people want to fix and that people care about.

When I felt Labor was losing it's way I launched a suicidal run against Adam & when people thought I was being an awful Chair they tried to get rid of me. In Labor we had debates & fights over our platform, rule changes, contested primaries & so on.

I know it's a grim task & a thankless one but honestly there's a danger that the federalists respond like you just lost power in a 52-48% election with a 5-4 house- rather than going through a whole year of successively losing & handing Labor two super-majorities. Is it time to reach for the big red button?

A large part of my speech was aimed at 2 and 5 with the hopes of opening the door to 3 and 4. Its a multi-step process as you know doubt are aware and some things need to happen before the others. The thing that most impedes us is the complete lack of engagement with Atlasia period. It is hard to balance passionate ideological in this era with avoiding the pitfalls of extremism and radicalism that define so many large elements on the right.

It is like I said in the party dissolution argument, if I had the power to arbitrarily redefine the party ideologically, we wouldn't be in this mess but a lot of this is natural and organic. I said several times in 2017 that Trumpism would never exist in this game because the Federalist Party had already moved populist on some issues under DFW and thus would be able to avoid that. What I didn't expect was the shift in medium from IRC to Discord and the disconnect this would create between the voter base who know found themselves increasingly defined by rl politics and the leadership class still trying somehow to formulate a path forward that involved actually contesting the game.

There was a big divide on the right last fall and a large segment of them just wanted to give up and abandon the game to the left and let it collapse. This did seep out into the public, but others and myself managed to beat this down, now it just crops up with individuals coming to me and wanting to leave the game or even the site because of how left wing it is.

Part of the response to this, actually made the underlying problem worse and this was the means by which the recruitment was done in late 2019 and everyone was in some ways responsible for this including myself but with LFromNJ and LT leading the drive and myself grudgingly accepting in this recruit by any means necessary model, which basically devolved to "recruit to stop/trigger the libs". During this period I recruited back or reached out to several people to try and balance this somewhat, and tried to encourage them to speak up more in public and offer a "mainstream view". This included Diptheriadan, Goldwater and others, but Goldwater left the forum in December.

Though it took months to reach fruition, the formation of the ModFed Caucus was something that I guess amounted to a more tangible form of those effects as an organized entity, thanks largely to RC, Spark and Bagel. The thing is the vast scale of this game now means that such efforts involving a few people here or there, just gets swamped by the latest recruiting binge for labor. Then in the midst of trying to organize a moderate faction we ended up losing still more moderates to Labor.

You say that I am referencing dated ideological causes and to some extent a bigger problem is not that they are dated but that they are not clearly and presently under threat not in the direct way of old labor, but the slow drip, indirect erosion of the JCP and that thus is less motivating to some extent but at that time with it book ended by direct threats (attempts to abolish Regional seats etc), the threat was fresh in people's minds. The thing is that was one thing that united everyone from AndrewCT/Torie/Duke in the center to SPC and PiT on the far reaches of the libertarian spectrum and social conservatives like JCL and Zuwo, and with Bush era conservatism completed dead, the Atlasian Right had to find something else to rally around that could separate it from RL right and allow it to be competitive again.

"Federalism" and/or "regionalism" is a proven to unify of all three factions and if we are to have an ideology, and then an agenda based around that ideology, I can find no other umbrella to my thinking that has a chance of not alienating at least some faction or wing of the party. Fiscal conservatism comes close but as we have seen it is hard to rally people around just that alone. Last time I did polling on the matter, these were the only two things that Feds almost universally agreed on, along with opposing the Assault Weapons Ban.

So my thinking right now is to emphasize those two things and then when the situation permits and the interest, come up with a range of policy proposals for solutions underpinned by regional action and responsible finance. You can then explore ways to promote life, or strengthen the family while working along those guideposts.