Beware the Baneful Effects of Party

There is an axiom that holds that if you repeat something often enough it will become accepted as a truth, regardless of its actual veracity. One of the more glaring examples of this, in the context of American democracy, is the general belief that this country is based upon a two-party political system.

This perpetually perpetrated fraud of fact is simply not true.

President Washington, in his famous farewell address, addressed his concerns to the young nation of the “baneful effects of the spirit of party… it serves to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration”. Our first chief executive feared for the embryonic republic; he had seen first hand the splintering among those in his administration as they had jockeyed for positions of political power.

There is no language, explicit or implicit, delineating that the United States government will be divided between and amongst merely two political parties. The impending danger to our nation is that the two dominant parties have so ensnared the election process to their advantage that any viable alternative is deemed a “third party” candidate, and they decry the populace of ‘throwing away their vote” on such candidates. They have developed and maintain an election system so byzantine and outright ridiculous they have in effect inoculated themselves from any real assault on their political power.  In a country of 300 million plus, it is ridiculous to believe that there are but two elective options from which to choose a representative leadership. A thriving democratic republic must embrace the full spectrum of ideas, and people to speak in support of those beliefs.     We cannot accept that we must choose from a menu which consists only of one item from column A, and only one item from column B.

The founders specifically wrote the Constitution to be free of and to avoid all manner of political dogma; we engage in it at our own peril.  

The Constitution speaks only that each chamber shall choose its officers. It makes no mention of political appointees; yet we blindly accept that ‘majority leaders’, ‘minority leaders’ ‘whips’ and such are and should be part of the official government. They are not, but are compensated for these additional ‘duties’, responsibilities that serve only the party, not the people.

If we are to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity” we must be ever vigilant against accepting blindly what we are told is fact about our democratic republic. The Constitution is available to any citizen to read and comprehend. Democracy needs to be thought of as a verb; to accept it as a passive term is to risk    falling into a default form of two party political autocracy.

This is what President Washington expressed concern over, and the warning we must heed.