----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 4:01 PM
Subject: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:03:32 -0700
6/22/09
Hello World Wide Democracy group members:
I am a new member, Bill McConochie. I am a research psychologist specializing for the past several years in political psychology research. My findings and personal inclinations are very consonnant with those of your organization. I believe I could help you in several ways to promote and realize your ultimate goal of advancing human civilization to direct democracy forms of governments. I will list some of these and await your responses. Before I do that, let me share just a little more personal background. I have a Ph.D., and 40 years of experience in clinical, I/O and now political psychology. I have created a non-profit corp. to publish my research and conduct research over the Internet. I am a member of the American Psychological Assn, Div. 48 (Peace and Violence studies), the International Society of Political Psychology, and the Oregon Psychological Assn. I present papers at the annual meetings of ISPP. I will present one in Dublin in July (09).
How I might be able to help you:
1. I have research findings that strongly support human desire for government serving them as members of the community overall rather than as members of special interest groups. This sort of data, of which I have much, can support your efforts, giving them an empirical and not just ideological grounding.
2. I have developed a reliable and valid scale for measuring the warmongering-proness of political leaders, and have another one ready for validation measuring constructive leadership traits. These can be used by the media to help inform voters re: what elected officials are likely to promote.
3. I have designed a working model for a political party whose platform is based on member (citizen) polls of what they want government to provide (policies and programs).
4. Sophisticated public polls on details of policy issues can be conducted to create the platform for such a party (and for your organization). They in effect pool all citizen opinions to create a current empirical definition of the common good. Your organization could conduct such polls and publish the findings to inform nations and the world re: what citizens want from government. This can help pressure standing governments to perform more appropriately and empower political parties that want to represent the common good (such parties, I recommend, should be funded entirely with member dues, no special interest group money). Such parties would fund the campaigns of their candidates for elective office as well, keeping their elected candidates independent of the contaminating influence of special interest group money.
5. You could help me by having students and other groups, e.g. church groups, fill out my research questionnaires, which are online at my web site.
6. Together we could thus continue the research that can give empirical grounding to your movement and perfect the public polls necessary to operationalize public democracy, defining policy via citizen votes.
This is enough for an introduction. Please visit my web site to read various research and essay articles under the Publications page. Politicalpsychologyresearch.com.
I look forward to hearing responses.
Best regards, Bill McConochie
Much about politics originates in our minds;
Understanding our minds explains much about politics.