Join the new world

I tried to write this article all day yesterday. With this freeze idea being rejected by some, and others scrambling to manipulate the situation to their advantage, there has been a lot to talk about.

After presenting the entirety of the Federalist Party with the options we have on the table in the upcoming election, we have decided to reject the election freeze. While we unanimously agree that parties should be doing more to protect our allies, we didn't think that freezing the election and appointing Congressmen was the best way to go about it. Democracy may be an ideal we carry over from real life, but it's an important one. So important, in fact, that every country in the New World uses this system. It has been built into the game mechanics. While more security measures could be put into place, we think this is one area where the game mechanics have it at least mostly right.

We know that the eUS must stay vigilant and do all we can to protect OURSELVES from PTO attempts, so Party VP, Wingfield, has presented this alternative here.

Protecting our allies and defeating PEACE seems to be one of the top priorities for our huge country, and yet our military is drastically understaffed. This is an unfortunate side effect of our nation being so ridiculously partisan and getting off on political drama. Through all of these congress discussions over the last few days, it was finally revealed that most political parties do little to nothing to encourage their members to join the military. A fear of falling membership combined with a belief that parties are strictly political entities has led many to act as though the military is someone else's responsibility instead of EVERYONE'S responsibility.

This isn't true of every party, of course. The Federalists have created a military office specifically intended to help our members interested in a military career. We keep track of our Feds Abroad and encourage them to stay connected to their party home, even when they're out in the world keeping us safe. Other parties have similar feelings toward soldiers in their parties, like the UIP, for example. Perhaps it is this similarity (among other things) that led our parties away from the Congressional freeze. If the problem is a lack of PTO forces, then the solution should be recruiting more PTO forces, yes?

It seems obvious.

As parties that already encourage members to enlist, we have a difficult time supporting the sudden call to FORCE people into the military by instituting a kind of draft. Part of the congressional freeze agreement included committing 10% of party members to anti-PTO efforts abroad. Even with the common practice of vote moving inside the country, no member (at least in the Feds) is ever told where they have to vote unless they voluntarily make their vote available to party interests. The same should be true of the military. Members have the option to enlist and volunteer their vote to military missions. Military orders ALWAYS come before party requests. About 10% of our membership is already in the military and they are kept in a totally different category. While they are beloved Federalists, they are not considered 'movable voters' for party use.

The freeze proposal seemed unable to effectively fulfill its intended purpose, and it is for this reason that we can no longer consider it as a viable option. We can only hope that this is not interpreted as somehow 'unpatriotic' and the threats of retribution subside. Afterall, the whole point here is to free up resources to help our allies abroad. I would be incredibly disappointed to see those new resources used to keep good candidates out of office simply because their party rejected this plan. In talking with other party leaders who have rejected the freeze, we have all agreed to do more to make every single one of our members aware of exactly what the Air Force does and how to enlist. I don't believe any of us are so selfish as to withhold this information from our members in the hopes of gaining more Congressional seats.