We are in the midst of our "democratic" candidate nomination process. There has been a great deal of excitement concerning the methods used by the various states and many are not satisfied with the process. We have heard about real or imagined problems with machinery, counting, intimidation, suppression, registration, locking doors, and we have had lawsuits, media bias, and money issues. There is more, but what I have listed is enough. The founder of this blog has summarized our predicament well. He said:
It's a bullshit, nonsensical system. And I look forward, once this process is finished, to a comprehensive look at reforming our primary process.
In fact, in my view, he didn't take it far enough. The two-party system is hurting our nation. In theory it seems to be workable, but it is not. Since 1800 when parties started to be developed, they have served as a mechanism for denying civil rights to all our citizens, not as an engine for advancing civil rights. In order to overpower the entrenched party powers we have had to have a cataclysm of some kind.
Right now we have a cataclysm on our hands. We have the war in Iraq produced by the worst president we have ever had, but who would not have been able to do his evil without the support of the two parties in Congress. But we had our chance before when another cataclysm occurred. We had a chance to overhaul our two-party system. Not so long ago something happened in America...
The greatest civil rights action in our country short of the Civil War happened in the 1950's and 1960's and that was due to the courageous non-violent action of Martin Luther King, and the violent murder of John F. Kennedy. MLK caused the cruel racial prejudices of the South be shown to the world at large. The people had their sympathies and their consciences stirred by these two events and LBJ had a fissured Congress before him. Violent intolerance was no longer tolerable, but how long would the window be open? The bigots from the South were off balance and LBJ, as only he could do, pressed the advantages created by MLK and JFK, the first bravely deliberate, and the second unwitting.
Parties did not change our civil rights, they had prevented them from becoming available to all our citizens. Chance produced the changes. Take away any of these three men, MLK, JFK, and LBJ and our southern schools might still be segregated. People may disagree with this assertion, but it is easy to demonstrate its validity. We had "separate but equal" then and we are still willing to accept it today.
We are perfectly willing to continue to deny homosexuals their rights, and the compromise is to begrudingly give them "separate but equal," civil unions, but not before a long, bitter, decades-long fight, state-by-state, constitution-by-constitution.
Even the presidential candidates of the Democratic Party, save one who many people disparage as a buffoon, are on record as favoring "separate but equal."
Parties are the problem. So revising our primary system is a waste of energy. The two-party system needs to be replaced with something that is more democratic, more accessible, and more responsive.
George Washington devoted 20% of his Farewell Address to warn us about parties. He said:
"... they [political parties] are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people..."
And:
"The alternate domination of one faction [party] over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and 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 and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and 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. "
It is easy to see that Mr. Washington is right and our two-party system is proof of his wisdom.