GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz refers to the stunningly corrupt mess that comprise our two major political parties in Washington as cartels. Many other candidates call the system wholly dysfunctional and at its best dishonest and self-serving.
Most candidates for office apparently believe thinking adults here in the hinterland swallow their calculated spin when they publicly condemn the very process they are part of maintaining, pretending as though they aren't also responsible. A tad ironic, eh?
Sadly, too many of us either aren't paying attention or seemingly don't care about the level of corruption. It's obvious how perverted things have become when voters elect convincing majorities of one party in both legislative branches to counter widely unpopular radical policies set by the other party. But instead, the newly elected join with supporting and maintaining those policies. Any wonder so many Americans are profoundly angered over the flagrant duplicity?
What a shameful, spin-driven system of controlling our hideously indebted nation we've allowed to become considered normal, as if we citizens have no say in our own country's destiny. We have ample cause to believe we have lost control of our sovereign republic of, by and for the people to the party politics President John Adams warned was the greatest "political evil."
I've come to view party politics and its tactics as an intentionally divisive, money-driven, self-perpetuating, good ol' boy network that all too often places a party and its gains above those whose overall best interests they are supposed to serve. Truth, and any adherence to truth's sacred quality (even among much of an obviously partisan and politicized national media) has no role in such a pervasive atmosphere of wholesale dishonesty.
I turned to genuine authorities, the founders of this democratic republic. Our three earliest presidents, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, courageously offered their insights and admonitions about political parties as they formed this nation some 240 years ago.
This beast hovering over us in 2015 has become a pathetic, often spineless representation of what these ancestors intended. I'm sorry we've allowed our nation to spiral into such a leaderless despotic void on our watch. We being the children of the Greatest Generation who sacrificed all to preserve the precious and authentic ideals of individual liberties.
Here's from Washington's farewell address (and warning):
"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.
"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind ... 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 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.
"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."
Adams, our second president: "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
Third president Thomas Jefferson admonished: "Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 08/25/2015