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.
David Ramsay, An Eulogium Upon
Benjamin Rush, M.D. Phila: Bradford and Inskeep (1813) p. 103.
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