2016 Voter's Guide: Beware of Partisanship!

     George Washington's Farewell Address was a gift to his nation for generations.  Schools required its careful study and memorization.  His address was "the disinterested warnings of a parting friend."  He saw danger in the way politics was taking place in our expanding nation.  He saw it as essential that we maintained our sense of unity as a people.  He saw unity as a pillar of our independence, tranquility, peace, safety, and prosperity.
     What was the danger to our unity?  Partisanship.  He was afraid that as we grew the needs of the industrial north, the agricultural south, the expanding west, and established east would conflict.  Advocates would arise to protect regional interests at the expense of national unity. Today, political parties build coalitions of divergent interests in order to gain power. 
     "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism,"  Washington wrote.  Partisan dissension "agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."
     He also saw the threat of partisanship opening the door to foreign political entanglements.  Foreign influence and corruption enter the door of government itself "through the channels of party passions."  Washington did not believe that partisanship provided another example of useful checks and balances to government.  Instead it "would always serve to distract Public counsels and enfeeble the Public Administration."  Can you effectively govern when your statesmen would rather score political victories than compromise for the sake of a united nation?
     Washington wasn't finished.  He believed that partisanship could so weaken a government from continuing conflict that the public would begin to "seek security and repose in the absolute power of an Individual."  The leader of the winning faction could turn his eyes to promote his personal interest and his own elevation in government.
     Washington ended his farewell with the desire to share, as a private citizen, "the benign influence of good laws under a free Government."  This fall, elect individuals who hope to continue Washington's vision.