Politicking

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY was founded as the "free soil", anti-slavery party in 1854, in Wisconsin. Abraham Lincoln was a founding member.Give credit where due. The "Grand Ole Party" has a well intentioned genesis. It went down hill in a hurry, as it was captured by big business in the post Civil War era of explosive corporate capitalistic expansion, the American industrial revolution. It has remained so captured ever since. The party of the wealthy elite, the Christian conservative party, is firmly entrenched within the bank books of billionaires. Of course, to a somewhat lesser degree, so is the Democratic party. Our great American uni-party, the party of property, Gore Vidal called them, the ruling wealthy elite, "our corporate" masters, he termed them, for good reason, accurately. The more things change, the more they remain the same, as the saying goes. Arguments can be made for the European political system, in which every country has a veritable plethora, a multitude of political parties, with shifting, temporary pro tem issue dependent coaltions, ranging from far left communism and socialism on the left, to conservatism and fascism on the far right. If you can't find a political home in Europe, you simply aren't trying hard enough. Since the United States is a nation of near European proportions size wise and population wise, with cultural diversity, somewhat, it should, arguably, have more than our mere two political parties. It should have several viable parties, all semi-major, all healthy, vibrant, and influential. Why not cover the entie spectrum, and truly represent everybody? Communists, socialists, liberal centrist, conservative, and fascist, with all of them viable and none dominant? The problem is the difficulty of forming a majority with the ability to actually pass legislation and get things done. Also, avoiding gridlock is an issue, gridlock which, in any event, we often have anyway. The chief benefit of the European systme is flexibility. The downside of individual politics, the hindrance, is fragmentation, atomization in which every man and woman is a political party unto herself, floating free upon the vast political ocean. In American politics a majority is easily attained, and readily stymied by the machinations of the minority. The founders intended that the minority have the wherewithall to act as a force to limit the power of, the "tyranny of the majority", as they put it. Otherwise, the body politic risks spiraling downward and descending into a one party tyrannical monopoly, as in fascism. We Americans need term limits, to prevent anyone from making a career of politics, from staying in Congress decade after interminable decade, effectively creating their own little fiefdoms, miniature kingdoms within their home stae from which they can go to Washington and wield personal power and influence in the legislative branch tantamount to a monopoly. When a politician has been in the House or Senate for three or four decades, and merely has to mail in his name to the election commission to stay in office, while his state's voters lazily succumb to his or her governing style and familiar, comfortable ideology, democracy stagnates, and said Senator or Representative becomes a sort of lord or baron, no disrespect intended towards the scion of our somewhat tyrannical current head of state. In short, a healthy democracy relies on a constant infusion of fresh, new blood. We are currently being governed by an elderly bunch, by our ancestors. Seventy and eighty year old career politicains do not adequately represent the interests of people under thirty years of age, to whom the future rightfully belongs. Jefferson realized this when he said that the American experimental republic would reuqire a revolution every generation, and that the tree of liberty would, from time to time, "require the noruishment of the blood of patriots and tyrants". We have reached that point several times before, one of which resulted in an internal domestic "civil" war of nightmarish proportions. Let's not do that again, shall we. Thomas Jefferson, after all, only goes so far. We Americans need term limits, which we actually already have, at the ballot box. No system is perfect, as we all know, and none will ever be, since God and Christ seem content to let us mere mortals stumble along in our ignorance, making and correcting our own mistakes.