Founding Father's wisdom

In his farewell address, George Washington warned our fledgling country against developing a party system. “It ... agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one ... against another.”

Washington lived hundreds of years ago, but his warning rings true to this day.
The political parties are killing our country.

The Democrats and Republicans are dividing our political system, each trying to win power. Emergency decisions are made at the 11th hour either because one side is making a power play or because they can’t actually sit down and make a decision together until it’s almost too late — such as what happened with the debt ceiling crisis.

It’s very hard for a moderate to get elected. The moderate candidates, who straddle the “line” between the left and the right and would be an excellent compromise between two belief systems, are rarely chosen because voters believe that compromise means giving in.

Instead, the right-wing and left-wing crazies who promise not to bow to the other side are elected, and thus the country becomes even more divided.

All the crap politicians sling while they’re campaigning — or while they’re in office and thinking about campaigning — about the “other side” not being willing to compromise is dividing us when we most need to
stand united.

After Congress resolved the debt ceiling issues, ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 80 percent of people are dissatisfied with the federal government.  

Think about it — we barely avoided having to shut down the government because the kindergartners in Washington couldn’t work together.

Actually, I take it back. That’s an insult to kindergartners. They know how to get along and share their toys.

People are unlikely to become more satisfied until the mud-slinging stops and the compromising — true compromising, not just last-minute attempts to save a government shutdown followed by snipes at the other side — commences.

Maybe if we got rid of the party system, a lot of this could be avoided. Then we wouldn’t have the government divided by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress; they would all just be people.

We would stop hearing accusations about what “the right” or “the left” are doing.

Maybe we could actually get something positive done for this country.
George Washington, who aligned himself with neither party, is rolling over in his grave right now.

If people think that what the Founding Fathers had to say was so important that they keep waving around the Constitution, maybe they should actually listen to what the Founding Fathers said and disband the party system that is crippling America.

­— hanns@indiana.edu