A Nation Divided
America’s first and only non-partisan president, George Washington, gave us an ominous warning of the grave dangers created by political parties. In his 1796 Farewell Address to the nation, the Father of Our Country warned us that the harmful effects of political parties are the worst enemy and the greatest threat to our newly created democratic republic.
Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.
Now George tended to be a little long-winded at times, but he was a brilliant prognosticator. You might even say that old George was the Nostradamus of the 18th Century!
He predicted that the alternating victories between the two political parties will create the disjointed, unplanned, uncoordinated, incompatible, and contradictory policies of two competing factions rather than the reasoned, well thought-out, and consistent policies adopted by a deliberative body with mutual interests
.… 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 councils and modified by mutual interests.
He predicted that party politics will serve to distract lawmakers and create an ineffective and dysfunctional government.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.
He predicted that political parties would have tremendous power to sow division among the People for the purpose of supplanting the entrusted will of the nation with the will of the party.
They 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…
He predicted party politics will lead to foreign interference and corruption assisted and enabled by their access to party politicians, subjecting the will and policies of the nation to the will and policies of other nations.
It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
He predicted that the anger inherent in party politics will ultimately lead to the incitement of insurrection based on false claims, devoid of any supporting facts and evidence.
It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.
He predicted legislative manipulation such as passing laws that serve to weaken and undermine democracy for the purpose of overthrowing the republic with the semblance of legality.
One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.
He predicted that while political parties may occasionally appeal to ordinary people who feel their concerns are not being met by the government, they will likely eventually evolve into powerful machines for cunning and unprincipled public officials to subvert the power of the People for the purposes of unjustly taking control of the government and destroying the very democracy that has entrusted them with that power.
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.
He predicted that the chaos and despair caused by the alternating victories between the two political parties will cause the People to seek the perceived stability of “law and order” in the absolute power of a single individual.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual…
He predicted that sooner or later (2024?), a charismatic leader of one of the political parties will steal power for themselves and destroy the public liberty.
…and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
Just as George Washington had foreshadowed some 226 years ago, such are the fertile conditions that now threaten to destroy our great nation.
So how did George do it? How did he know all of this? Was he a clairvoyant, a soothsayer, a prophet? It turns out that good old George was a student of history; he studied the past to understand the present and envision the future. That’s called wisdom. Genius, huh?
George’s wisdom advises us that it is in the interest of – and indeed the duty of – a wise people to discourage party politics, and he warns us that party politics demands eternal vigilance, lest we be consumed by it.
…the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it…A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.
My friends and fellow Americans, our democratic republic is now in the process of being burned to the ground by the all-consuming flames of party politics. As the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln (borrowed from the wisdom of Jesus) warned us three years before the Civil War, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And in the words of Founding Father Patrick Henry, “United we stand, divided we fall.”
Shall we stand United? Or shall we fall divided? The choice belongs to All of US!