by Gary Griffin
THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES
Although the classical liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries best describes the ideas that went into the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the opinions of the Founding Fathers in forging a new nation were not unanimous. The U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787, but almost as soon as the ink was dry, various factions that held competing interests as to how this new government should go about the job of governing were formed. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the subject of political organizations, mainly because most of the Founding Fathers disliked them. Yet, groups soon arose and resulted in the formation of political parties.
The first party system of the United States featured the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist Party grew from Washington’s secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong central government. The Democratic-Republican Party was founded by James Madison and by Washington’s secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who strongly opposed Hamilton’s agenda. The era of good feelings (1816-1824), marked the end of the first party system. Political consequences of Federalist opposition to the War of 1812, as well as other factors, first reduced the Federalist Party to merely local significance and ultimately to complete disappearance. The era of good feelings thus marked a brief period in which only one party, the Democratic-Republican party, was significant at the federal level.
In 1824 and 1828, The second party system saw a split of the Democratic-Republican Party into the Jacksonian Democrats, who grew into the modern Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay. The Democrats supported the primacy of the presidency over the other branches of government and opposed the Bank of the United States, as well as modernizing programs that they felt would build up industry at the expense of the taxpayer. The Whigs, on the other hand, advocated the primacy of Congress over the executive branch as well as policies of modernization and economic protectionism. Central political battles of this era were the bank war and the spoils system of federal patronage. The 1850s saw the collapse of the Whig party, largely as a result of deaths in its leadership and a major intraparty split over slavery as a result of the compromise of 1850. In addition, the fading of old economic issues removed many of the unifying forces holding the party together.
The third party system stretched from 1854 to the mid-1890s and was characterized by the emergence of the antislavery Republican Party, which adopted many of the economic policies of the Whigs, such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, and aid to land-grant colleges. The fourth party system, 1896 to 1932, retained the same primary parties as the third party system but saw major shifts in the central issues of debate. This period also corresponded with the Progressive Era and was dominated by the Republican Party. The fifth party system emerged with the New Deal coalition beginning in 1933. There is debate over whether it ended in the 1960s along with the New Deal coalition, in the mid 1990s, or continues until today.
The modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Candidates from either of these two parties have won every United States presidential election since 1852; since at least 1856, either party has controlled the United States Congress. Several other third parties have achieved relatively minor representation at the national and state levels from time to time.
MODERN POLITICS
Today’s political parties are reminiscent of two boys playing with matches who accidentally start a forest fire. Thousands of acres of trees and many homes are burned. The end result is thousands of dollars of damage. Of course, the two boys are scarred and pretend they had nothing to do with the fire. Upon investigation, it’s found that they started the fire. Once identified, they deny any involvement. After conclusive evidence shows they started the fire, and they can’t deny their involvement, they point their fingers at each other and say, “He made me do it.” Sadly, this is how our political parties seem to operate in America.
Modern politics is not that much different than politics of old. The politicians have become more sophisticated, more adept at hiding their self-interest in terms of public interest, but it’s still the same old story. Every four years, we are presented with a choice to vote Republican or Democrat. This is not really a choice since both parties are guilty of the same practices and the same tactics. They both seek to control government for self-gain; they use government to control the population and push their ideas and ideologies on everyone else in the nation. They never seem to acknowledge that even with a majority of the votes, it generally represents about 20 percent of the population at most. It so often is presented to the public that the general will of the people has been expressed, and that the rest of the nation should allow 20 percent of the populace to tell 80 percent what to do. This was not the intent of our Founding Fathers as they forged a new nation.
General will, much like individual will, forms the basis of action within a republic. As such, it represents the direction a society must take. This general will is commonly called public opinion.88 Smart politicians understand that in order to maneuver into a position where they can utilize their power of government, they must inform public opinion and use this to establish an agenda, that is, a course of action for a nation. This works well, except in cases where this mechanism is used to push specific political and personal agendas that are based solely on the self-interest of one or only a few. In this instance, it can hardly be said that the action taken represents the will of the majority, since the will of the majority is based on manipulation by a few to gain access to power.
Public opinion, from this perspective, functions as a theory of civil society that can be traced to philosophically based ideas underpinned by theory. It is created. When the creation isn’t understood and controlled by its creator, it can be a creature with very destructive uncontrollable powers. Modern political parties create such creatures though social policies reflective of their political philosophies.
Public opinion, when informed by media who distribute information that supports such specialized interests, can hardly be said to provide an unbiased opinion. Unfortunately, you can’t believe everything you hear and everything you read, regardless of source—TV, radio, or a blog. These also represent interests that often aren’t aligned to the best interest of the public good. Both parties in the United States use this mechanism to sway public opinion in their favor.
The Democratic Party is one of two major political parties in the United States. It is the oldest political party in the United States and among the oldest in the world. The Democratic Party, since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, has consistently positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic and social matters. The economically left-leaning philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, shaped much of the party’s economic agenda since 1932. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition usually controlled the national government until the 1970s. The civil rights movement of the 1960s has continued to inspire the party’s liberal principles, despite having lost the more conservative South in the process. In 2004, it was the largest political party, with 72 million voters (42.6 percent of 169 million registered) claiming affiliation. The president of the United States, Barack Obama, is a Democrat, and since the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party is the majority party for the 110th Congress. The party holds an outright majority in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Democrats also hold a majority of state governorships and control a plurality of state legislatures.
Modern progressivism insists that we need to change. Unfortunately, the progressive form of change generally is a push toward more government control, more government programs, and more socialism. They believe that more centralized power in the hands of government is a good thing. They suggest this is necessary to support centralized planning that is fundamental to
a planned economy. What they fail to understand is how this only creates more bureaucracy that makes it harder to get things done. They maintain that this form of government is necessary for the twenty-first century. It’s fundamental to those things we hold dear such as liberty. This is the Democrat Party.
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States of America. It is often referred to as the Grand Old Party or the GOP. Founded in 1854 by antislavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party rose to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals toward the end of the nineteenth century. Today, the Republican Party supports a conservative platform (as far as American politics are concerned), with further foundations in economic liberalism, fiscal conservatism, and social conservatism. George W. Bush was the nineteenth Republican to hold the office of president. Republicans currently fill a minority of seats in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, hold a minority of state governorships, and control a minority of state legislatures. The party’s nominee for president of the United States in the 2008 presidential election was Senator John McCain of Arizona. It is currently the second largest party with 55 million registered members, encompassing roughly one-third of the electorate.
The twenty-first-century Republican Party doesn’t provide a better solution. Their ideas and ideology are bankrupt. The current trend within this party is one of moralism. They also want to tell you how to live your life, but they want to take a higher moral ground as the basis of arguments against change. They also use government as a means of control over the rest of the population to push the agenda and their ideals.
Rob Atkinson in his book The Past and Future of America’s Economy describes the stance of both parties extremely well. He maintains that both current liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans are statists who wish to maintain the status quo by returning to bygone eras—“conservative Republicans to the social order of the 1950s and the economic order of the 1920s and liberal Democrats to the social order of the 1960s and the economic order of the 1940s.”89 Both are wrong and their ideas and ideology is simply out of date and out of touch with the needs of the American population of the twenty-first century.
Liberty is not freedom; liberty guarantees freedom. More government control can never result in more freedom, especially freedom of choice. Choice as a basis of action must also have responsibility attached. As explained by Frederick A. Hayek, central planning doesn’t allow for liberty, as it restricts an individual’s ability to make choices—it’s not what you want, it’s what the government thinks is best.90 This form of government destroys a complex society’s ability to get work done, such as is the case of America in the twenty-first century. Central planning is cumbersome and restrictive in an agricultural society. It is very costly in an industrial society where the economy relies on the control of time and space of each worker involved in the production process. In an information society with a knowledge-based economy, it is impossible.91
In the twenty-first century, we must approach government from a different philosophy with a different set of ideas—one that encourages growth. This philosophy must embrace the macro-level trends, especially the one where individual human beings are the owners of the means of production, by embracing and encouraging entrepreneurship. This philosophy must go further by understanding and implementing an open market process, lowering taxes to support entrepreneurship, innovation, and by extension economic growth, while at the same time respecting the civil rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. This type of government cannot include a welfare state, nor can it tolerate any form of imperialism.92
Although people who support these ideals go by different names—libertarian, classical liberal, conservative, and liberal—none of these seem to fit the bill. The Jeffersonian philosophy of limited government, liberty, the free market, and the rule of law that protects the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be reinstated to its original form. Liberal is the most appropriate term, but in contemporary America, when many hear the term liberal, they run in the other direction. Interestingly, the root word for liberal, liberalism, liberty, and liberation is the Latin term liber, which means free, not slave. When you reject liberalism, you are rejecting your freedom. One reason for this is because the term was adopted by FDR and the New Deal era, and it became associated with government programs and the welfare state. Now, people in America interpret liberalism to mean a form of socialism, and/or a lack of morality and a moral center. None of these are true.
GOVERNMENT AS MASTER — PEOPLE AS SLAVES
As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “in a free society, differences of political sentiment result in different political parties. These sentiments resolve themselves naturally into two basic parties: the authoritarian (or monarchist, tory, etc.) that favors government that controls the people, and the democratic (or republican, liberal, etc.) that favors government controlled by the people. The body of the nation chooses a path that is mapped by one or the other of these parties.” It is a nice thought to think that the politicians we elect to represent our interests actually represent our interests. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a sad statement of the role of government in the United States, but it’s the way it is.
What most people fail to recognize is what happens when we go to the booth to cast our vote every four years. It is through this action that we transfer our power to the politicians we elect. This power is used to vote yea and nay in Washington to establish social policy—our laws of the land. There’s nothing wrong with this form of government when it works the way it’s supposed to work. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work anymore. When the power of the vote is directed by self-interest and special interest, it no longer represents the people of this nation and their interests.
The current system of government lacks integrity because it lacks accountability. When there is no accountability for actions, corruption rules. In this way, government is completely corrupt and corrupting. It is rotten to the core. When things rot, they then decay eventually disappearing into nothingness. How much longer do we have before the American government dissipates into nothing and ceases to exist?
A corrupt government can never serve the needs of the people because it is self-serving. White House for sale—how does that yard sign strike you? Impossible? Not hardly. In the 2008 presidential election, around one billion dollars was spent just to get a job that paid only $400,000. How does this make sense? What is the return on investment? If the cost of becoming president is one billion dollars, then how many people can afford that job? The truth is that it has nothing to do with the monetary compensation. It is about serving self-interests. The choice for America in the twenty-first century is not one ruled by either Republican or by Democrat. As we sit at this crossroads, the choice is not one of right or left. The choice is one of government and more government or liberty. To this choice, I offer the same thoughts shouted by Patrick Henry in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
THE CURRENT STATE OF GOVERNMENT
For the baby boom generation, the war to end all wars was not World War II. That war was their father’s war. Their war was the Vietnam War, and it defined their generation. The war abroad in the fight against Communism, and the social unrest here at home in America had a profound effect on that generation—a profound effect that is still being felt today.
Unfortunately the rest of America is also caught in the downward spiral that defined that time period. The Vietnam War was a war of ideals and ideology, and it is still playing its tunes today in the hearts and minds of those affected by it. The struggles of that time period are still haunting our nation’s halls of power throughout all levels of our society. It’s the same issue, the same tired arguments, the same ideological principles; it’s just a differen
t time and now the baby boomers are all grown up and facing their own mortality. America is caught in the middle. The pathway to prosperity has never been war. That path can only be peace. Let’s declare peace before it’s too late.
When we consider the debt accumulated by the baby boom generation, it’s easy to say I’m unimpressed at the accomplishments of my father’s generation. So much debt has been foisted on future generations just to support their ideological positions, and that debt will continue to climb over the next decade. In fact, it will never be paid off. With the anticipated national debt expected to land somewhere between 35 and 50 trillion by 2020,93 it is a mathematical impossibility to work enough and to produce enough goods and services that will result in enough value to even service the debt, let alone pay down the principle. Our children have literally been sold into debt slavery. And to my sadness, the total cost of the debt of the baby boomers is unknown—it’s impossible to predict with accuracy. When we consider the aging population of the baby boomers, their issues of old age, and the influence of their retirement on productivity in that decade, I can predict nothing less than total economic devastation for the U.S. economy. But let us not despair; for we have hope, and, most importantly, we have time. Time is running out, however, so we must act now. We must put aside ideological differences that only serve to divide us, and celebrate the diversity that defines this nation in order to achieve the greatness that can be America once again. This can only be accomplished through massive social changes in all major social structures. We simply can’t put new wine in old barrels. We need new barrels.
The Republican Party saw its ideology, which can be traced directly to economic policies of the 1920s, totally demolished. The Democrat Party is in danger of the same thing happening in the next decade. Economic liberalism, laizze-faire capitalism, and free market economics didn’t contain nor restrain corporate greed—$700 billion to bailout banks with taxpayers footing the bill.94