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Are we witnessing another collapse of the party system?
// Personal Liberty Digest™
I know it's still early, but it's beginning to appear this election cycle that conventional wisdom may not hold.
The pundit class and the establishment politicians inhabiting the insular bubble that is the District of Criminals are flummoxed. They can't fathom why the hoi polloi will not fall in line behind establishment-approved candidates (and there are several, but particularly they are Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton). Some pundits are even offering to turn in their "pundit license."
For example, The Washington Post's Charles Lane told Brett Baier on Fox News' Special Report last week: "I think I'm going to have to turn in my pundit's license because — or somebody is going to revoke it because I really can't analyze this phenomenon. We're living through one of the strangest, most — if not strange, one of the most puzzling moments in politics that I can remember."
For all the establishment's machinations, The Donald will not go away. His "impolitic," but correct, observation that Sen. John McCain is only a "war hero because he was captured" didn't doom him, as they predicted. His "impolitic," but correct, observation that Mexico is sending rapists and criminals across the border didn't doom him, as they predicted. His debate performance, in which the petulant establishment mouthpiece Megyn Kelly attempted to take him out, backfired. Attempts to couch his statements about Kelly coming at him with "fire coming out of her eyes … her whatever" as a sexist reference to menstruation are mind-boggling sophistry. The rank and file aren't buying it, recognizing a straw man when they see one. And Erick Erikson's disinvitation of Trump from his Red State Jeb Bush praise-fest revealed Erikson as the neocon elitist tool that he is and only served to elevate Trump's standing.
Americans in flyover country have long sensed that the politicians they elect are not the politicians who end up inhabiting the District of Criminals. And they have long sensed that the system is rigged against them and in favor of the establishment and crony corporations. Though they have sensed it, for the most part they still have played along in the hope that, somehow, something will change.
But politics is nothing but an absurd theater. It's a parlor trick. It's sleight of hand. The two-party system is not Democrats versus Republicans. It's government versus the people. And the government is a fascist system controlled by the corporations on behalf of the corporations. The people's voting just provides the system with a sense of legitimacy.
Just think back for a moment and consider how long it has been since electing a president has changed the direction of the country from empire building, foreign wars, debt, money printing, and growing government to smaller government and individual liberty. How long has it been since a Congress controlled by one party or the other shut down unconstitutional alphabet soup agencies, shrank government or passed a law that did not benefit the elites and Wall Street and the establishment to the detriment of the people? Is there a time?
America did not start out with a party system. While there were two predominant factions during the Constitutional Convention– the Federalists (a misnomer because they advocated for a strong centralized government and British mercantilist system, and who supported the ratification of the new Constitution) and the anti-Federalists (who advocated for a weak central government with strong states, i.e., republicanism, and advocated against the new Constitution) — they were not organized parties. Those developed during George Washington's term as government evolved.
They lined up into two predominate factions under national government — the Federalist Party in the Alexander Hamilton, John Adams camp; and the Democratic-Republican party (more commonly known as Republicans) in the Thomas Jefferson, James Madison camp — and soon began organizing in the states.
The Federalists were the party of big government, British mercantilism (crony capitalism), and a national bank. They supported debt, tariffs, money creation and strong ties to England. The Republicans opposed strong executive power and standing armies, supported a strict reading of the Constitution regarding government power, and advocated for strong ties to France.
The Federalists were the predominant party until 1800. The Republicans were predominant into the Era of Good Feelings (1816-1824).
The Federalist Party essentially died over its opposition to war with England in 1812, but collapsed completely following the Hartford Convention in 1814 — in which they discussed secession — and in the war's aftermath, as both the politicians and the people united in a sense of national purpose under the presidency of James Monroe. The Democratic-Republican Party remained in place but was largely inactive on the national level and in most states.
The second party system began in the 1820s, following the 1824 presidential contest that elected John Quincy Adams. The Democratic-Republican party split. One faction supported big government; a national bank; public funding of internal improvement projects like roads, canals and harbors; and using government power through public institutions like schools, hospitals and the like to "moralize" the quality of life for Americans. The other faction favored smaller national government and opposed a national bank and any efforts of government that they perceived threatened their economic, social or cultural freedoms.
The first faction became the Whig Party. Hailing primarily from the northeast, Whigs were mostly big-business types who rallied around John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The second faction became the Democratic Party. Democrats were more agrarian, and they rallied around Andrew Jackson.
The second party system lasted about 30 years but collapsed after the demise of the Whig Party, due to its factionalism and internecine squabbles and the rise of a number of minor parties largely dedicated to pursuing singular or sectional issues.
From the Whigs' ashes rose the Republican Party. The historian Bruce Catton wrote in "The Civil War" that in 1860 Lincoln wanted to be the nominee of the Republican Party — a party that consisted of an amalgam of former members of the defunct Whig Party, free-soilers (those who believed all new territories should be slave-free, largely in order to preserve white farm jobs), business leaders who wanted a central government that would protect industry and ordinary folk who wanted a homestead act that would provide free farms in the West.
Catton wrote:
The Republicans nominated Lincoln partly because he was considered less of an extremist than either (Senator William H.) Seward or (Salmon P.) Chase; he was moderate on the slavery question, and agreed that the Federal government lacked power to interfere with the peculiar institution in the states. The Republican platform, however, did represent a threat to Southern interests. It embodied the political and economic program of the North — upward revision of the tariff, free farms in the West, railroad subsidies, and all the rest.
The Democratic Party also split, largely along North and South lines.
Politicians have longed recognized that group conflict is endemic to American society and that the vitality of political parties depends upon the intensity of their competition with opposing parties, as Michael F. Holt wrote in "The Political Crisis of the 1850s."
In other words, political parties exist to create strife between opposing factions; and, indeed, they thrive only when that strife is present. It is when the people recognized that the parties represented their own interests and were essentially one in the same that the party systems have collapsed in America.
Holt describes how just prior to the U.S. war to prevent separation, Americans, particularly Southern Americans, had lost all confidence in the current political system because the existing parties did not represent the people but instead represented the agricultural aristocracy, big business and the banksters. There was also an influx of aliens (mostly Irish Catholics and Germans) who Americans believed did not understand or appreciate America's "values." The political parties agitated the people over these immigrants, creating a constant state of strife in addition to the already existing acrimony over the slavery issue, the addition of states to the union and tariffs.
America's current political system is very similar. Regardless of which "party" holds power, government grows more oppressive and steals more wealth from its people. It creates one crisis after the other, keeping the people agitated against each other so they cannot focus on the real culprit behind their lost liberties: fascist government.
Americans now recognize that the party elites and the candidates they push no longer represent the American people in any fashion. This has led to the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party presidential races. Both are opposed by the crony capitalist, fascist-leaning, Council on Foreign Relations-dominated, globalist-minded political establishment.
Trump has given a middle finger to the establishment and political correctness. He has advocated for a border fence to keep out illegals and a return of the American manufacturing sector. This has endeared him to a broad swath of the American electorate tired of the establishment that not only did not represent them, but actually governed in opposition to their wishes despite public outcry.
We may be witnessing another collapse of the party system, which for generations has been a faux two-party system. If it happens, it won't be missed outside of the establishment circles. But I'm not sure conservatives will like what rises in its place if either The Donald or Bernie become president.
I predict it will continue to be government versus the people. And, conservatives: Despite what you may think, Donald Trump is no conservative.
And if conservative means smaller government, more liberties, constitutional governance and an end to American empire building, none of the "choices" currently available to you are either.
Additional sources:
"The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War" by Michael Holt
The post Are we witnessing another collapse of the party system? appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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