POLITICAL PARTIES, ENDURING NEMESIS

Political Parties,
Enduring Nemesis of the Republic

I believe it was Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote in his 1513 Tome, The Prince, “What doctors say about consumption applies here: at the beginning the disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose, but in the course of time, when it was not diagnosed at first and treated, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. Thus it happens in the affairs of state: if the evils that are developing are diagnosed from afar (which only the prudent man can do), they are quickly cured, but when they have not been diagnosed and are allowed to grow so that everyone recognizes them, then there is no longer any remedy for them.” It is my considered opinion that Political Parties, and the intellectuals who shape and control them, is ever much like the disease of consumption that Machiavelli used as a metaphor for the evils that can destroy a State. Just as the disease of consumption (tuberculosis) has a germ that is the basis of the disease (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and is the evil that can destroy a healthy body, there is also an evil that can also destroy the healthy body of a Constitutional Republic. The evil that can destroy a healthy, liberty-loving Constitutional Republic is a disease called factionalism. The disease of factionalism can destroy a healthy, liberty loving Constitutional Republic just as easily as consumption can destroy a healthy active human body. The disease of factionalism also has a germ that is the basis for the disease, and the deadly germ that causes the disease of factionalism is called a political party. Political parties are created for the expressed purpose of representing factions and then gaining power to prevail over other created factions. Political parties are therefore the very antithesis of a freedom-loving people seeking ways to come together for common cause. American political parties began with the establishment of the Federalists (strong federal government) and Anti-federalists (fearful of a strong federal government usurping a state’s sovereignty) and continue until this day. As Machiavelli pointed out, now that the disease of factionalism is finally diagnosed, the likelihood of curing the disease is a most difficult endeavor. Perhaps you are thinking that I’m overstating the importance of political parties being antithesis to our beloved Republic. Fair enough. Then perhaps you will consider the farewell address of President George Washington wherein the first President devoted most of his remarks about the evils of political parties. I have included a portion of his historic remarks on the subject below:
“They (political parties) serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Even though it will be nearly impossible for the American people to cure the disease of factionalism caused by political parties, by the grace of liberty, it can be done. We can kill the germ of political parties by not supporting them in any fashion whatsoever. Come on America, don’t you really think it’s time for us citizens to think for ourselves and renew the Republic on an individual basis. I know it will be extremely difficult for a people conditioned by an entitlement culture fashioned by political parties to create lifelong constituencies, but it can be done by becoming independent citizens and voters and giving all political parties the boot.