World's Smallest Political Platform

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The World's Smallest Political Platform (also referred to as the WSPP), is a platform or manifesto written for use by libertarian political parties.

Contents

The WSPP reads:

"The [insert name] Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose."

The WSPP was written by political activist Thomas L. Knapp [1], who released it [2] under a Creative Commons license for commercial or non-commercial use, with attribution and without modification.

It was written during the period immediately preceding the Libertarian Party's 2006 national convention as a "model platform" for possible adoption by that party, and was intended to address two internal LP disputes:

  • The dispute between "purist" and "reformer" factions over whether the party should take an "abolitionist" (broadly defined by many libertarians to include ending many political impositions, rather than only chattel slavery) or "incrementalist" approach to public policy issues; and
  • A related dispute over whether the party's platform should be a short, "directional" statement (with specific public policy positions contained in a short-term "program") or a longer document incorporating the party's specific public goals.

The WSPP is written to form such that a party adopting it may (while remaining in accordance with it) take either an "abolitionist" or "incrementalist" approach -- or a mix of the two -- but not an approach which requires compromise, or trading off of "steps in the wrong direction" for other "steps in the right direction."

The WSPP is also written to require a programmatic approach to specific issues, as the platform itself is unmodifiable under the terms of its author's license.

The WSPP is currently in use by one political party, the Boston Tea Party.

    Advanced Search
    Included Web Search Engines


    Safe Search

    close

    Top Matching Results

    Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

    Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

    Sponsored Links

    This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

    Search Results

    Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

    The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.