Two Party System

At the founding of our nation, there was no two party system. In fact, the founders considered the idea of national parties as offensive and contrary to their high purposes.
     From the start, America was a great experiment of Enlightenment Age ideals based on reason. Its concept of republican philosophy was based on a commitment to virtue. In this respect, the republic was fragile and dependent upon the support and good will of the people. Lacking an aristocratic hierarchy for structure, the whole concept of a republic seemed a tenuous adventure. Anything could happen. The founders were placing their newly formed nation into the hands of the unpredictable masses. This required a powerful faith in human nature.
     While conceiving this venture, they were convinced that defined political parties — large, on-going and catering to special interests — would become self-serving instead of dedicating themselves to the interests of the public good. The nation would be subject to (and therefore harassed by) competing ideologies, rather than more encompassing, non-partisan goals and fresh, new ideas that everyone could embrace. Parties would divide the country into permanently combative factions — and in many ways their concerns proved to be correct. The media has gone so far as to brand states either red or blue, according to recent political leanings. They know full well that every state reflects a variety of opinions, yet the labels stand encompassing everyone with political caricatures.
     When a party becomes self-conscious, which it must, it becomes self-serving. It loses sight of the broader focus that the nation needs. Instead, it represents the agendas of its factions. For this reason alone, it can never represent the overall good of the people, but only the ideology of its constituents, often twisted by extremist elements.
     In the past, this has led to class, racial and economic tensions that further entrenched the opposing parties.
     It also resulted in advocacy on issues that make no sense at all, other than to differentiate party differences. Each party feels obligated to uphold the opposite position of the other on a variety of issues.
     Consider:

• How can anyone be against the health of the environment we live in, when our very lives depend on it?
  
• How can anyone not support freeing ourselves from our dependency on oil in light of global warming, enriching terrorist enemies, and the fact that oil is an expensive and limited resource?
  
• How can a party concern itself with the strength of the economy without being business oriented?
  
• How can the validity of war, with thousands of people being killed, be a partisan issue?
  
• How can a candidate assume a "mandate" for fixed, extremist agendas when his or her election was based on only the slimmest of margins? Doing so makes political backlash inevitable, further dividing the nation with every change of leadership.
  
• How can patriotism ever equate itself with party loyalty when two sets of "patriotism" are at each other's throats? There has to be common ground, or patriotism itself is an empty term.

And then there's the issue of corruption. Party politics offers fertile breeding ground for fraudulence, propagating support from broad constituencies who think that their "side" can do nothing wrong, reserving critical eyes only for the opposition. Each party tries to make the other look bad, while overlooking and even defending their own misdeeds. In their efforts to do this, enormous sums of money are used for clever and often misleading propaganda. The parties are then beholden to contributors, advancing special interests before the good of the people. Backroom deals corrupt a process that only thrives with full disclosure.
     A party that exclusively represents the poor, middle class or wealthy, or a particular race or religion, betrays those citizens that it fails to represent. And yet we hear speeches that shamelessly do exactly that. We are so accustomed to these morally bereft dynamics that we never even ask our leaders why they fail to represent the vast majority of good people of every distinction. In effect, we've bought into the system rules as parties define them and lost sight of our higher vision.
     Despite the abhorrence that our founders felt at the prospect of party politics, it was not long before contention made them inevitable. James Madison organized the Democratic-Republicans, which was soon followed by Alexander Hamilton's Federalist party. These formations were instigated by those who were against Hamilton's economic proposals, and those who supported them. The rest is history.
     What is not history, not yet at least, is our own personal response to partisan politics.
     We need to ask ourselves if it is possible for major parties to avoid all the pitfalls of the two party system. Can awareness help deter corruption? Can the parties become less dogmatic, less hostile to one another, less reactive in their decisions? Can they find a way to regulate themselves, and place the good of the country before the good of their own special interests?
     In light of mindless group dynamics, probably not. In light of finer ideals, the possibility changes.
     That life on our planet may come to an end because partisan politics refuses to confront global warming, or other environmental poisonings, or intelligently handle terrorism or population growth, are the most serious indictments I can think of against the dark side of human nature. But there are others. That poverty remains rampant in the United States, and wealth surpasses all other priorities, no matter how patriotic, provides other sources of shame. With jobs and investments rushing overseas and not strengthening our own economy, while unskilled migrant workers flood across our borders, unregulated, we are left with a simple sense of balance that tells us we are in more trouble than our leaders admit. They predict things will rebound, and assure us that they always do. But ask them how? What do they see in their crystal ball that can possibly reverse the trends of foreign investment and cheap labor before it's too late? What well-paying jobs are going to suddenly appear from nowhere without a plan?
     We cannot effectively deal with these problems while supporting the status quo of partisan politics, which has worsened considerably and strategically under the likes of past Majority Leader Tom Delay, who viciously condemned national unity by equating politics with actual war.
     There's no easy answer, but there is a real one that is within our reach.
     We, the people, have to stop selling our integrity to party-line thinking, and think for ourselves instead. We have to seriously question things, and hold our leaders accountable. We have to embarrass them when they try to manipulate our values. We need to study the issues with open minds in order to speak intelligently and present new ideas.
     The republic cannot be saved by a leader, no matter how unique or popular, but only by the people for which it stands — and that means us.
     If we, the people, don't care enough to respond intelligently, where stands this patriotism heralded by bumper stickers, flags, fireworks and rhetoric? We have enough talking heads furthering political division — to their own monetary gain, I might add. Where shall we find the truth-tellers that we need, the peacemakers, those who thirst for justice yet are willing to be merciful? In other words, where are the real knights of humanity, if not among and within ourselves? When you confront this question, you realize that partisanship has nothing to do with it.
     The major parties will continue of course. What we have to decide is whether or not we join them in hopes of turning them around, or withdraw from them completely until they decide to act differently. Both approaches have merit, even when working in conjunction. If popular support wanes and new blood injects new integrity and idealism, things will change.
     We need to resurrect the spirit of our founders in us before it will ever be reflected in politics. The spirit and ideals of 1776 are as valid today as they were then, if only we sift through the distractions that try to overwhelm us.

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