Tag: political parties

Washington is a foreigner

We’ve had a very unsettling experience here at the HP.

Our 2012 post “Washington’s Farewell Address: Avoiding Foreign Entanglements” has been trending since Inauguration Day, most likely because of this section:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. 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.  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; 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.”

—This is the part of the Address that most people remember (the idea, if not the actual words). Here Washington is warning against political factions, and he equates the formation of political parties with inevitable dissension. This definition of what can happen when partisanship runs rampant must sound familiar to us today: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension… 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 [who] turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.” When the political process grinds to a halt because one or more political parties refuses to work with others, only a charismatic individual can take the lead, and this kind of cult of personality is antithetical to democracy.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds 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. There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage 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.”

—Political factions or parties “[serve] always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” Again, so familiar to us today, at a time of great partisan conflict.

Formal despotism has come upon us in the United States under Trump. Whether it becomes permanent remains to be seen, but that is the intention of Trump and everyone who supports him. Factionalism, magnified beyond all possibility before the advent of social media, has agitated our nation with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindled the animosity of one part against another, and foment first riot and now insurrection (by way of the executive branch).

Washington… the name conjures up the entire American journey, from colonies to revolution to democratic republic. The highs of Enlightenment, Constitution, and the quest for representative government contrasted with the lows of colonizing conquest, slavery, and denying women the rights of citizens. The triumph of creating the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” and the failure of having to struggle and fight for over two centuries to make it more of a reality. (Yes, the phrase comes from the 1885 pledge of allegiance, but think about why that is–why someone 110 years after the Revolutionary War began, a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Civil War, used it to express American patriotism). Washington played a crucial role in founding and preserving the United States, quite literally for better and for worse. His enlightened understanding of liberty and willingness to fight for it stand beside his callow and inhuman reluctance to stop breeding human beings for sale when he understood that it was, in fact, clearly morally evil. We inherit both sides in America. The fight since his time has been to reduce the evil by growing the good until we finally achieve real democracy. As young people, when we saw Washington’s image in a K12 textbook, it reminded us we are inheritors of a just war for equality.

But now, one of us recently saw this classic, familiar image of Washington somewhere in passing, and had the weird and troubling realization that it felt foreign. They had, in short, the feeling that the line has been broken.

The line from our founding through the centuries to today, with its successes and failures on the path toward full democracy, is broken. We’re not connected with our past anymore. Washington is no longer someone to learn lessons from as we shape our collective identity. His image used to be a nutshell for the idea that doing the work to make liberty and justice for all a reality is what makes us Americans. He left so much unfinished and even untouched. Generations that followed him took up that work, honoring the good in our history but insisting on calling out and destroying the bad.

But now Americans are being told that we have no collective identity, only factions, only one of which is righteous. That fighting for justice is not our inheritance or our mission. That, in fact, our society has always been just because it has always benefitted rich straight white Christians. That, we are now told, is what we need to make sure continues.

The majority of our current government and our citizens no longer understand what’s good in our history, let alone acknowledge the evil within it. They’re destroying history, deleting its records, burning its archives, and forcibly teaching something new and false and deadly, dedicated to the principle that no humans are created equal to rich straight white Christians.

Is the break irreparable–permanent? Not yet. Maybe not ever, if the minority who stay on the path to full democracy refuse to leave it. The sickening nature of this moment should be a tonic that keeps us on that path. Maybe moments of disconnect, destruction, and rupture like this are what it takes to remind us of the high stakes of this battle. For now, not recognizing Washington anymore is pretty strong medicine to take.

De Tocqueville on Red and Blue States

I was listening once again to Bill Cook’s fantastic lectures on De Tocqueville last night and he was on the section where De Tocqueville talks about political parties.

De Tocqueville describes two types of political party: great parties and small parties. Great parties, he says, overturn society, replacing one system of thought with another. Small parties agitate within society. So whereas great parties tear society apart and create a new society, small parties only degrade the existing society.

Great parties focus on ideas, the big picture, and the general effects of those ideas in practice. Small parties are petty, focused on individuals, immediate consequences, the here and now, and, above all, victory. Victory is more important than convictions, and when winning is job one, the small party will compromise its own values to win. The small party doesn’t really have a philosophy or faith in a set of values. It will adopt whatever policies allow for victory, and will scare voters by predicting that individuals from rival parties will cause immediate negative consequences for them.

When De Tocqueville was writing, in the 1830s and 1840s, there were no Republicans and Democrats as we know them; the two-party system was not yet in place in the U.S. But his description of great and small parties rings true today.

The party that says if Michael Dukakis is elected president, then Willie Horton will come to your house and kill you, is a small party. The party that wants you to focus on a gas tax holiday over the summer of 2008 while accomplishing nothing toward our long-term fuel problems, is a small party. The party that agitates against gay marriage while ignoring or generating the economic problems families face is a small party. The party that gives lip service to military personnel and their families while refusing to pay those personnel properly or support their families in any way if the on-duty family member dies in service, is a small party. The party that builds a wall to keep out immigrants while refusing to penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants, and while refusing to stop using the services of illegal immigrants itself, is a small party.

As we vote this year for a president, and as we vote in other years for Congress members, governors, state legislators, and the many referenda that come up in our individual states, we should remember De Tocqueville’s definitions of parties, and make sure we cast our vote for the party that overturns some long-held ways of doing things in order to create more common good, rather than the party that merely asks us to hate someone else in our country.

The party that tells you that your good can only come about if someone else is punished is the small party, and does not deserve your vote. The party that tells you that the U.S. must continue to do what it has been doing because to change course is to lose, that change is humiliation, does not deserve your vote.

Keeping De Tocqueville in mind whenever you go to the polls will remind you that this nation was founded on big ideas and overturning society for the good, and that no harm can come of Americans thinking big.