Ralph Nader's Concord Principles were offered in 1992 as an invitation to the Presidential candidates to improve civic dialogue and the democratic institutions of the United States.
They are written as 10 pleas intended to avert a trend of corporatism in government, plutocratic influence, banal sloganistic elections, power singularities and a popular sense of political futility in political dialogue.
The list calls for:
- More governmental transparency and civic communication for social consensus.
- More public control over civic assets such as public lands, airwaves and pension funds.
- Strengthened protections from big government and big corporations.
- Democratic protections against nullification of voter powers by:
- Bold options for "None of the above".
- 12 year maximum term limits.
- Improved voter registration and ballot access.
- Public financing of elections.
- Binding referendum, initiative and recall powers for state voters and non-binding national referendums.
- Checks on Presidential and Congressional pay raises.
- Improved taxpayer oversight of public expenditure.
- Improving the civic information infrastructure through:
- Computerized government records.
- Utility company billing as a civic notification process.
- Expanded public access television.
- Strengthened access to courts to prevent corporate and government abuse.
- Protection for whistleblowers.
- Shareholder protections against corporate greed.
- Strengthening school curriculum in civic participation.
Famous quotes containing the words concord and/or principles:
“When, said Mr. Phillips, he communicated to a New Bedford audience, the other day, his purpose of writing his life, and telling his name, and the name of his master, and the place he ran from, the murmur ran round the room, and was anxiously whispered by the sons of the Pilgrims, “He had better not!” and it was echoed under the shadow of the Concord monument, “He had better not!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)