JEQuidam
08-26-2008, 09:39 AM
Does George Washington's warning about political parties resonate with Americans in 2008? Or will this just not make sense to people?
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."
— George Washington, September 19, 1796
George Washington spoke at length about the "baneful effects" of political parties:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Baneful_Parties.htm
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."
— George Washington, September 19, 1796
George Washington spoke at length about the "baneful effects" of political parties:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Baneful_Parties.htm