Politics is dominated today by partisanship.
"Negative ads" reflect the reality that many voters vote
against a candidate, rather than for one
they trust. Voters complain of the misdeeds of the opposing party
but forgive the same corruption in their own party. In his
"Farewell Address," George Washington warned against
excessive allegiance to any political party:
Let me now . . . warn you in the most solemn manner against
the baneful effects of the spirit of party. . . . The common and
continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to
make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and
restrict it. 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 . . . . In governments
purely elective, it [the spirit of party] is a spirit not to be
encouraged.
Democrats have claimed that the "vast right-wing
conspiracy" was out to get Bill Clinton, and that he really
did no significant wrongs, and they might agree with Washington
against the partisan spirit of the Republicans. But in fact we saw
a far different manifestation of the Party Spirit. Had Clinton
been a right-wing fundamentalist, Democrats and feminists would
have been all over him for his reprehensible behavior. Instead of
agitating and inventing false-alarms, Party Spirit, as Democrat
David Shippers has argued, now covers up. (And
high-ranking Republicans, Shippers says, covered up as much as
Democrats.)
Both major political parties are as bureaucratic and
unreformable as the government they both promise to
"re-invent." Both Democrats and Republicans belong to
the party of Big Government.
Benjamin Rush signed the
Declaration of Independence and served in the Presidential
administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison
-- each of whom came from a different political party. And of what
party was Rush?
I have been alternately called an aristocrat and a democrat.
I am now neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power. . .
will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands
of man. He alone Who created and redeemed man is qualified to
govern him.
- Rule
of Law in the Wake of Clinton
Source: The Cato Institute
Author: Roger Pilon
- Edited by Cato Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon,
this book includes 15 essays by scholars, lawyers, lawmakers
and cultural critics that chronicle Clinton's utter disregard
for 'a nation of laws, not of men.'
-
- Feeling
Your Pain
Source: St. Martin's Press/Laissez Faire
Author: James Bovard
- The explosion of government power -- and abuse of that power
-- under the Clinton-Gore administration, and what that
presages in coming years. St. Martin's Press 2000, hardcover,
426 p., $18.50 from Laissez Faire.
The Left-Right distinction is
virtually meaningless.
next: Patriotism, Activism, Protest
David Ramsay, An Eulogium
Upon Benjamin Rush, M.D. Phila: Bradford and Inskeep (1813) p.
103.
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