Political divisions or parties formed during the struggle to ratify the federal constitution of 1787. The fiction grew over the idea of an essential federal government or one that invested power in the states.
Jordan Schachtel has an article posted today in his substack that warns of the threat of the growing Uniparty movement. Factionalism is not the worst thing that could happen – the Uniparty is. Most countries in the world are led by authoritarian governments, which is a natural outgrowth of a Uniparty.
We can fight this and win, but we need the Republican Party to come out fighting.
THE FEDERALISTS AND THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS
Alexander Hamilton supported the idea of a strong federal government, and they called themselves the Federalists. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson pushed for states’ rights instead of central power. He and his followers were called anti-Federalists. The Federalists leaned toward the commercial sector, while Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists leaned toward agrarian interests.
The ensuing battles led George Washington to warn of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” in his farewell address as president of the United States. He didn’t say not to have parties; he warned against the problems they cause.
George Washington warned, “Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.”
In this letter to “Friends and Citizens,” Washington warned that the forces of geographical sectionalism, political factionalism, and interference by foreign powers in the nation’s domestic affairs threatened the Republic’s stability.
BANKING
Banking was the first dividing issue. Federalists supported the chartering of a national bank, and the Democratic-Republicans opposed it.
The framers of the new Constitution desperately wanted to avoid the divisions that had ripped England apart in the bloody civil wars of the 17th century. Many saw parties—or “factions,” as they called them—as corrupt relics of the monarchical British system that they wanted to discard in favor of a genuinely democratic government.
“It was not that they didn’t think of parties,” says Willard Sterne Randall, professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and biographer of six of the Founding Fathers. “Just the idea of a party brought back bitter memories to some of them.”
George Washington’s family had fled England to avoid the civil wars, while Alexander Hamilton once called political parties “the most fatal disease” of popular governments. James Madison, who worked with Hamilton to defend the new Constitution to the public in the Federalist Papers, wrote in Federalist 10 that one of the functions of a “well-constructed Union” should be “its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”
But Thomas Jefferson, serving a diplomatic post in France during the Constitutional Convention, believed it was a mistake not to provide for different political parties in the new government. “Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties,’’ he would write in 1824.
Could they all have been right? Is there something in between that we once reached?
When Washington ran unopposed to win the first presidential election in the nation’s history in 1789, he chose Jefferson for his Cabinet to include differing political viewpoints. Randall thinks, “…he had been warned if he didn’t have Jefferson in it, then Jefferson might oppose his government.” Perhaps.
Jefferson sided with Hamilton in the defense of the Constitution – Madison strongly opposed Hamilton’s ambitious financial programs, which he saw as concentrating too much power in the hands of the federal government. In 1791, Madison and Jefferson joined forces in forming what would become the Democratic-Republican Party (forerunner of today’s Democratic Party) largely in response to Hamilton’s programs, including the federal government’s assumption of states’ debt and establishing a national banking system.
Today, we face the same problem with the Federal Reserve and powerful corporate interests and billionaires facing off with the working class. Taxation is integral to the division.
By the mid-1790s, Jefferson and Hamilton had quit Washington’s Cabinet, and the Democratic-Republicans and Federalists spent much of the first president’s second term bitterly attacking each other in competing newspapers.
Currently, Democrats have control over most of the voices of the people.
The Federalists never won another presidential election and disappeared after the War of 1812. A new party emerged with Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party of the 1830s. The Republican Party was founded in the 1850s, with Abraham Lincoln giving it the stature it needed and the Democratic Party forming to oppose it, especially over slavery.
The Democratic Party slogan of many delegates was, “This is a white man’s country, let white men rule.” Grant’s slogan was “Let us have peace.”
The two parties have shifted over time, changing identities, and seem to be developing into a Uniparty.
The parties have moved away from their core principles.
Today, the Democrat Party stands for very strong central government control and collectivism. The Republican Party should stand for states’ rights, limited government, and the rights of individuals.
THE UNIPARTY THREAT
Bipartisanship has zapped strength from Republicans and going along to get along isn’t working.
Many now see the Republican Party abandoning principles. They appear to be uniting with the Democrat Party as the Democrat Party moves further and further left.
Jordan Schachtel has an article today in The Dossier warning of the Uniparty threat, stating, “America is the only Anglosphere country left without a fully captured one-party system.” He looked at New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and Australia as countries with different parties with very few differences.
Just as we have to avoid the factionalism of a two-party system, we should fear the uniparty, primarily when it seeks to become a central government overseeing everyone in the name of the collective. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Too much power in the hands of a few elites is dangerous. No one is accountable to the people in such a situation.
We also have the globalists of the UN who want every nation to rally around globalism. To effectuate their goals, the West must abandon their sovereignty and views of individual rights.
They will rob you blind, and nobody will be accountable. Whatever flaws the two-party system has, it gives individuals choice. The Democrat Party is moving to become the one party. Republicans are moving to unite with them -they need to return to their roots to fight the movement. If they don’t, they will disappear. They need to remember what they stand for and fight for it.
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