Posted on 12/24/2019 8:20:36 AM PST by Perseverando
Maybe it’s the Christmas season, or maybe it’s the grotesquely rabid partisanship of the Democrat impeachment follies, but we’re hearing a lot of moaning and groaning about “partisan rancor” and what a threat it is to our “democracy.” But tyranny, not “partisan rancor,” is what we should fear, for freedom is the foundational good that our government was designed to protect.
An example of this misunderstanding about partisanship can be found in some comments by a very smart political analyst. He writes that the “partisan bitterness that is dividing us into two warring camps . . . is the greatest threat American democracy faces today. Democracy cannot exist when a country is divided into two camps, each of which sees the other as an enemy rather than an adversary. Democracy relies on the suspension of partisan rancor in the interest of the nation.”
First, this common claim that we are at a moment of unprecedented partisan division ignores a lot of history. What about the Civil War and the decades leading up to it? We were divided into two literally “warring camps,” and that divide culminated in over 700,000 dead Americans. Yet our democratic republic not only survived, but became a world power, which was made possible in part by the lancing of the moral infection of slavery, and the confirmation that the union could not be broken into vulnerable sections and become easy prey for foreign powers.
But rancorous divisions can be found in every decade of American history. As American historian James McPherson pointed out in response to the claim our partisan divide is unprecedented,
The country was probably more divided, and the
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
That may well be, but Washington, bless him, was hoping for a non-partisan United States. He had seen what partisan politics did to Britain and wanted no part of it here. It’s ironic because the seeds of partisanship began in his cabinet with the divide of Jefferson and Hamilton.
Many of us remember a non-partisan time in U.S. history. It lasted for a couple of weeks after 9-11. We were all Americans then. It was great.
At the founding of the US, about 20% were Loyalists, 33% were Patriots, and the rest were ballast. If you consider Dems to be Loyalists and Deplorables to be Patriots, we haven’t changed much.
I was quickly reading your post and realized I had misread it. At first glance I thought it said:
Many of us remember a non-partisan time in U.S. history. It lasted for a couple of weeks after 9-11. We were all Americans then it was gone.
We are all Americans when we are knocked down. Some people like it.
Your reading works quite well. For those who remember, the media was quite snarky about GWB on the day of 9/11, but after a few days, they toned it down. Then it was gone.
Maybe so, but I’d suggest the worst laws we see as a nation are usually those that pass the House by a 225-5 margin and the Senate by a 99-1 vote. The awful PATRIOT Act was a product of the post-9/11 “non-partisan time” you describe.
Sorry ... that’s supposed to be a 425-5 margin.
In their world some person or persons represented the threat of tyranny or mob rule and all good men were supposed to come together to oppose them. There was much anger and bitterness, but there wasn't a sense that the two sides were two parties that would alternate in power: one side was evil and to be crushed.
You can see that at work during the Revolution and later when Federalists and Republicans attacked each other and accused each other of trying to destroy the republic. It was very different from how things have worked in much of our later history, but not so different from how many people think today.
When there wasn't a threat, individuals and factions competed for what they wanted without necessarily forming parties. But usually a threat was in the background to convince people to work together. In Britain, during much of the 18th century the Tory party (not yet the Conservatives) was associated with the deposed Stuart rulers and discredited. Everybody seriously in the political game was a Whig and different factions jostled with each other for influence.
Madison thought that an "extended republic" would bring together local factions into coalitions and diffuse the bitterness of local conflicts, but I don't know that he had much of an idea of what national political parties would look like or how they would function. He came to follow Jefferson in viewing Hamilton and the Federalists as a threat to be crushed, not as part of some "two party system" of parties alternating in power.
So is "fierce division" a "right and expectation in free societies"? It's unavoidable when people deeply disagree about fundamentals. But given the consequences it's had in the past it may not be something you want to give further encouragement to. When it seems like one third of the country is in permanent conflict with another third, the third in the middle that isn't engaged keeps the country together.
This guy is full of crapola. The 60’s were nothing compared to today. Half the country was not trying to institute socialism. Same deal during the civil war.
This country is divided right down the middle. Each side hates the other and there will be no unifying. We are at war with ourselves. There will be a clear winner and a clear loser at some point.
It’s not the partisanship that is the problem, it’s that one half of this country WANTS TYRANNY.
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