Political Parties, August 21, 2000

This is an essay about Political Parties. It is not intended to propose that any one Political Party is any better or worse than any other, but rather should be seen as a backdrop against which my other comments must rest.

The most telling comment is that Political parties exist for one reason only. That is, all policial parties. That reason is that they are an attempt by the minority to control the majority.

The most obvious example of this are those political parties which simply outlaw the competition, such as the old Communist Party in the Soviet Union. I remember statements that the Communist Party never had more than a few percent (maybe as high as 5?) of the people of the Soviet Union as members. This meant that that 5? or so could control the entire political process because all other political parties were outlawed, and, as far as I know, no independents were allowed to run for political office.

Another example can be seen in the recent primary election for the State School Board here in Kansas. The overriding issue was the debate over Evolution. The real race was for the nomination of the Kansas Republican Party. Two people ran, the incumbent, who had voted to remove evolution from the educational requirements of the State, and the challenger, who had vowed to re-enstate the previous standards. (Now, I have to admit the position of the School Board on evolution was never popular in the state of Kansas. It made the state the laughing stock of the country, and the majority of the people never agreed with the position anyway.) The challenger won.

I must admit that I, personally, do not disagree with the outcome of that election. However, I am not a registered Republican, so I could not vote in the election. The point is this, it could have been that I really did not agree with the results (and this is probably true with some people). That being the case, this election was just an attempt by a few people to control the majority.

That is, suppose that, in fact, only 26 percent of the people in Kansas happened to agree with the outcome. This is really a small minority. Further, suppose that that 26? was all Republican, and that the Republicans made up 51? of the population. Then the 26? would be about 51? of the Republicans, so that they would get their person in a candidate. This candidate would (in theory) then win with 51 percent of the vote, since, the Parties hope, everyone would vote party lines.

If one reviews the several elections for School Board leading up to this election, you can see this crisis coming. That is, it was reported that the "Religious Right" was attempting to take over the Republican Party. Now, I don't want to imply that the rank and file Republican is a member of the Religious Right, but rather that they probably aren't. The Religious Right, though, recognizing that they were never a majority, and are unlikely to become a majority, chose to concentrate everything on the Republican Party, so that they might be able to become the 26? I talked about in the last paragraph.

It turns out that it failed.

(I have to admit that there was also the problem of "stealth candidates." That is, candidates [from the religious right, in this case] who would simply lie to the people to get elected. I have to point out that this is true of other movements as well, however, the so called Religious Right this is unacceptable. The truth is that "bearing false witness" [lying] is very strongly condemned in no uncertain terms in the bible that the Religious Right is so committed to upholding. Therefore, while I would condemn such practice in any candidate, I would particularly condemn those of the Religious Right.)

I suppose that one could talk about what we can do about it. I do not claim to have all the answers, but I can make a few comments.

First, in the United States it looks to me like the founding fathers at least initially did not like the idea of a Political Party. This can be seen in the fact that there are no Political Parties meantioned in the Constitution of the United States. And yet, one cannot say that they didn't understand Political Parties, they did, as Political Parties are much more of a factor in the English political system that they were aware of than the new system they were creating. They were probably left out due to the abuses that the English political parties tended to promote.

The first, and most obvious, solution to this problem is to eliminate the idea of party loyalty (and this means to any party). If one looks at the senario that I have outlined above, you can see that if people did not automatically vote party lines, than this would not be a problem. If 26? of the people voted for an issue in the Republican primary, then the general election would simply see the Republican loose. This requires an educated Populous, and, even more important, an sceptical populous.

The initial attempt to eliminate Political Parties in the United States has already been alluded to. That is, simply don't have any, as was the case in the United States for the first few years under the Constitution. The failure is that it is too easy, and desirable, for people to ban together to promote causes they believe in; that is, to create Political Parties for what is believed to be very important reasons. And it is impossible to prevent this without trampling on everyones civil rights.

Something along these lines that the States could do is to eliminate Political Parties from the electorial process. That is, they may exist, but they do not have to be advertised by the state. I believe that this happened in Poland about the time of the overthrow of the Communist. That is, the Government allowed other parties, but did not allow the parties to identify their candidates on the ballots. This meant that people really had to know their candidates in order to vote.

Of course, this would take a revolution to impliment, because the Political Parties have become so intrenched in the Political scene in the United States that they will not give up power easily. Look at the "government funded campaines" hoax. That is, Politicians say that by having the government fund political campaines the special interests will not be able to control the outcomes. This has been implimented in a small way in that the government will have "matching funds." Really, this means money for the Democrats and Republicans, as no other political party could hope to muster the funds to challenge the people getting these funds.

(That is, excepting the Reform Party which was able to go through the gauntlet because Ross Poret (sp) could fund the attack from his private fortune. However, that was obviously a flash in the pan, as the party is no longer in vogue and will likely not get anything next time. The major political parties know this, and will do nothing to curb that party because there is no need.)