Who doesn’t love a party?

The founding fathers didn’t, and neither should we

Authors note: this first appeared on my substack in Feb. 2023. The topic is, perhaps, even more relevant today than it was at the time of publishing. Political parties do NOT care about you. They do NOT care about America. They care only about themselves, their power, their profit, their prestige. We must break the cycle of political partisanship if we want America to remain America.

Surely our govt. may get on, & prosper, without the existence of parties. I have always considerd their existence as the curse of the country, of which we had sufficient proof, more especially in the late war. - James Monroe to James Madison, 12 May 1822

Americans today have never known a time when there were no political parties, or more specifically, the Democrat and Republican parties. There has actually only been a short time since the signing of the Constitution, 1816 through 1827, wherein the United States had no national political parties. Perhaps more interestingly, the founding fathers did not, at least originally, look favorably on the concept of political parties. In the Federalist 10, James Madison wrote the following:

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction…

…

By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

The Federalist Number 10

The founders saw political parties as a menace, a way that a group could come together and force their desires upon others who did not share their beliefs or to whom the group’s desires would be detrimental. Nevertheless, despite the warnings, partisanship was evident from the beginning. First came the Federalist party, started by Alexander Hamilton, and in response, the Jeffersonian-Republican party formed. As with the parties today, these parties partook in propagandizing and campaigning for their preferred candidates. Still even Washington was opposed to such partisanship, as he made clear in his farewell address:

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, controul counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the Constituted authorities are distructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. 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 enterprizing 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 councils and modefied by mutual interests. However combinations or Associations of the above description may now & 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, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

George Washington’s Farewell Address - 19 September 1796

Washington understood that the formation of parties would lead more easily to widespread dissoluteness, duress, and despotism. If you look at Washington’s words, he could not have provided a more apt description of the current state of our government: “unprincipled men,” subverting “the Power of the People,” usurping “the reins of Government,” “destroying…the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” One would be hard pressed to name more than three (if one could name that many) people currently in government who could not be described as “unprincipled.” Subverting our power and usurping government? It happens all the time. Executive orders, unconstitutional exercise of powers by Congress and by the bureaucracy, illegitimate spending - we could spend all day, many days, discussing the illegal excesses of government.

Parties do not benefit we the people. While parties may at times espouse policies beneficial for the country, more often than not, they embrace positions that benefit themselves. Parties are also self-preserving - they advocate candidates and policies that will benefit the party, and that generally will help to aid the party gain or maintain power. They also tend to be vengeful toward each other. Washington perceived this as well:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & 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 & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & 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.

George Washington’s Farewell Address - 19 September 1796

Does this paragraph not, in its entirety, describe what is happening in government today? Are we not seeing the rise of despots, and even the support of such, within political parties determined to impose their will on dissenters? Though the parties as they now exist are not the same as at our founding, the interests and impulses bear little difference.

Madison believed that the causes of political partisanship, and therefore, parties, could no more be done away with than human nature itself. He concluded that any attempt to do so would be tantamount to exterminating liberty:

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: The one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: The one by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it is worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

The Federalist Number 10

Instead, he believed the functional form of republicanism would overcome the potential pitfalls of partisan politics.

I agree - the liberty that we exercise, and that leads to factionalism, can not, must not, be abridged. Nor can we force every citizen to share the same opinions. What if, however, we simply did away with party? Clearly there will always be people who have similar interests and wish to impose their will upon others. This is, again, human nature. However, what if the framework of political parties was put to an end? No more Republican party; no more Democrat party; no more party organizations.

Consider for a moment that the parties as they now exist are corporations. Not simply grassroots organizations of people with compatible political leanings, but actual corporations. These corporations have agendas. They compose platforms on which they (supposedly) stand, and on which they expect the candidates they support to run. These corporations select candidates who will be on the ballot. They select candidates to run in the primaries, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent outsiders from winning a primary, even working to personally destroy individuals who try to oppose their favored candidate in those primaries. These corporations raise obscene amounts of money to promote, and propagandize for, their preferred prospect. They divide the American people, pitting them against one another, encouraging us to vote for their candidate over the other party’s candidate, because party.

Imagine instead candidates having to run on their own merits, their own principles and positions. Imagine not being able to vote by selecting a single item on a ballot, but instead having to choose a specific candidate for each open position (this is the case in some states that do not permit straight ticket voting). Imagine (most) candidates not having millions to spend campaigning, but instead having to accept whatever air time is offered to all candidates, and to enter election debates standing on their own policy plans and, if already in office, prior record.

We no longer truly have choice in elections. We are provided the illusion of selecting candidates, but in reality, the parties select, even in primary elections. People align themselves with parties, and then generally vote along party lines. Setting aside the rampant prevarication and mendacities of the candidates, this results in people no longer taking responsibility for knowing who a candidate actually is, what that candidate believes, nor the policies that candidate will truly promote. Instead, voters simply look for the letter next to the name and select the candidate of the party with which they identify.

When is the last time you truly felt like you were voting for a candidate rather than against his or her opponent? When is the last time you truly felt like you were voting for a candidate who you believed would uphold the Constitution, who had the best interest of the country at heart, and who would stand up against those who would usurp their office for personal gain? When is the last time you truly felt like you were choosing the best candidate rather than voting for the lesser of two evils? This is the result of the burgeoning power these parties wield. That power does not belong to the parties - it belongs to we the people. It is time to take it back!

We must find a way to decapitate the parties and go back to a system where candidates are forced to run on their own merits. This will return us to some semblance of what the founding fathers proffered when they penned the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The difficulty for most in accepting this is that it puts responsibility on individuals, on we the people, to actually understand the founding principles of our country and the limited power that the Constitution grants to the central government. It puts responsibility on individuals, on we the people to know the candidates and vote for the ones who are most likely to work within the bounds of the Constitution and to govern in the best interest of the country. We the people have gotten lazy and abdicated our duty in knowing what government should (and should not) be and do, in holding our delegates accountable, in ensuring the government does not curtail our liberty that it was established to protect.

The onus is on we the people to make this happen, and we cannot do so as long as we continue to cater to political parties and participate in partisan politics. The founding fathers did not like the idea of political parties, and neither should we.