The Will of the Parties Outweighs the Will of the People

Political Party Pooper is a blog dedicated to the independence of Americans, to restoring our local and Federal governments to a process that represents the will of the People, rather than the will of a Party; and finally, as what was once considered an impossible goal, to the elimination of political parties in America.  Having spent eighteen months writing this blog, and having been forced to pay more attention to politics than anyone should be forced to, I have come to the conclusion that now, more than ever, real independent change is possible in America.

An up-to-date view of Washington politics shows us once again facing gridlock with nearly every piece of legislation; especially those that mean the most to Americans.  Health Care Reform, a Jobs Bill, and Wall Street Regulation Reform have all been on the table for months.  None of them are finished, and two of them appear to be all but dead.  Democrats had a super-majority in both houses, and have failed to overcome the Republican minoramajority.  Washington is frozen in partisan conflict, and the menu for working and out-of-work Americans has been a decade of lies and screaming across the aisles that has accomplished nothing of significance.

In 1994, President Clinton’s Healthcare bill failed.  Then Republican-leader Senator Dole swore by the hair on his toes that Republicans, if given a majority in Congress, would work with Democrats to pass meaningful health care reform.  Flash forward to 2010, sixteen years later, and we see how that worked.  No health care bill, and no attempt at it, either…until 2009.  Again, we see Democrats trying to finish a bill, and Republicans promising to help if only the Democrats will tear up what they already have, and start over.  Are Democrats really considering this?  Maybe, maybe not.  It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that Washington is frozen, and the two parties are guilty.

George Washington, in his Farewell Letter to America, dedicated nearly a quarter of his address to the dangers of political parties.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive 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 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.

“They serve to organize faction…to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party.”  Ah, George, George, George…if only we had listened to you.  Having read Washington’s address numerous times, I am astounded by his foresight.  Everything he warned us about political parties has come to pass.

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.

Okay, George, now you’re just showing off.  But how could you have known exactly what political parties would do to American government?  How could you have known that in a battle for power, two opposing parties would lie about the other, distort the truth with false alarms and agitate the community?

A better question would be; How could we have not known?  When in the race for power, and that of a kind which is “freely” given by the popular mandate of the people, is there any question as to the lengths that a political party would go to gain such power?  Would that Party lie about the methods and motives of any opponent?  Would a Party create diversions to turn the American consciousness away from the truth?  Would any such Party fight and scratch, and bribe its way into power?  Would that Party use any means at its disposal to either gain, or retain, the power that “represents” the mandate of the people?  Would a Political Party obstruct needed reform, and resort to the meanest schemes in order to destroy any legislation which disagreed with its core principles?  Would two political parties usurp the will of the people so effectively as to create a system whereby the highest bidder was able to purchase legislation benefiting the smallest of concerns?

All of these questions have already been answered.  They are answered day by day in Washington.  What our first President warned us against, which in essence is rule by despotism, is the same rule he went to the field of battle to defeat for all Americans.  After our Founding Fathers battled and defeated the King who was an ocean away, two political parties right in our backyard have quietly and easily established a new despotic rule.  America, freed once from the mad reign of a King, is now ruled by two  mad kings.

Each King claims that in electoral victory, they have the mandate of the people, all of the people; when in truth, the only mandate they rule by is their own strict ideology, exactly like the rule of a dictator or a king.  America is as subdued and oppressed by despotism today as we were in 1776, only our two kings swear by the almighty God that they rule according to will of the people, and always in protecting our freedom.

It is not the issues at hand in Washington that expose this despotism.  Health Care Reform, Jobs bills, Civil Rights, Social Security…none of these issues indicate the type of government America has.  Rather, the kind of government we are under is revealed in the language and methods used by the two parties to either support or obstruct these issues.  No one issue is a trademark issue for an entire nation; using one issue as the example for what type of government America is ruled under is false, because issues change.  What does not change is the rhetoric and the methods of the  two parties, and so by their inflexibilities will we recognize the despots that have usurped the will of the people.

It is that very inflexibility which has created an environment in Washington where issues no longer dictate our path; instead, our path is dictated by the ideology of one faction or another, and neither ideology truly represents the actual will of the people.  These two factions are engaged in a duel to the death; the spoils are the will of the people, and no weapon or method is too horrible to employ when power of this sort is available to be concentrated into the hands of the very few.  America is today ruled by two kings more despotic than the King we defeated to earn our freedom.  King Republican and King Democrat have America in a death grip, and we cycle back and forth between opposing ideologies that do not fairly represent our will.  For it is now and has always been our will, above all, to be free of this kind of ineffective and unrepresentative tyranny.

George Washington foresaw the very state that we find ourselves in.  America is factioned; divided by two Parties whose overreaching goal has always been to subvert the will of the people, bending it to obey the will of the party.  Neither party enjoys even close to fifty percent approval of the People.  And yet, if a Party wins an election, their will is forced down the throats of the People as surely as if they were King, and their will were divine.  We do not live in a Representative Democracy.  We live in a two king Government; one that is almost completely deaf to the will of the people, to the needs of the masses, and to the freedom that our Constitution guaranteed us.  That Government, of the Party, by the Party, and for the Party, has failed, not because the will of the people was not clear; but because the will of both parties was to destroy each other, eliminate opposition, and rule according the Party’s strict ideology.  In all of this, the will of the people is barely remembered…useful to both parties now as merely a sound byte.

The one question of our time, the question the People must answer is; will we go quietly into this dark night of despotism?