(I originally wrote this on December 14, 2012)
The
American Revolution was fought not only for the immediate fate of the
colonists, but also for the future residents of the country they hoped to carve
out from Great Britain. The rebels thought, fought, planned, bled, and died for
a future where men were free to govern themselves. In the preamble to the
Constitution of the United States of America, it reads,
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
We as the citizens of the United States of
America have abdicated our Constitutional rights and responsibilities to govern
ourselves by vesting power in the two major political parties. The rightful rulers of the United States, its
people, must break the power of political parties. The unique system of
government bequeathed to us from the Founders of our country demands that the
power of government be wielded by the people, otherwise there is no reason for
the United States to exist. In the
Declaration of Independence it states,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
This
was true in 1776, and it is still true today.
Luckily in order to alter the form our government has taken we do not
need to have an armed rebellion, just a little change in our voting habits,
because the Democrat and Republican parties are not true representatives of the
people who elect them to power. They are not affected by the laws they pass,
they are supported by the taxes of the people, even when they are independently
wealthy, which most of them are. Both parties refuse to cooperate with one
another on specious grounds, which boil down to the often unspoken cliché of
the critic; “I wouldn’t have done it that way.”
As both parties tell the Manichaean lie that they are the party of the people,
opposing the darkness with the light of rational platforms designed to keep
America great, they blame the other side, in an endless cycle of political
maneuvering, which has the effect of obscuring the fact that no one on either
side is getting done what we the people need to have done on our behalf. The parties have become a law unto
themselves, rather than doing their professed job of representing the best interests
of the American people. Hence, the power
of the parties should be shattered by the American people because 1) the system
of government we enjoy is rooted in experimentation. 2) We must grow up as a
democracy in the 21st century, and 3) all systems run to corruption
without constant and perpetual renewal.
The
people of the United States have allowed our national interests to be swallowed
up by the interests of the political parties, whose central interests are
holding on to their supposed power. We
can change this situation, and indeed must, if our country is to flourish. The
rebellion against the British monarchy was an experiment in self-government,
and was a resounding success. The
democratic republican form of government we enjoy today was made possible by
the revolution, which was not a sure thing. Since then, democracy has spread
across the globe, and is still growing.
Monarchies still exist, but the power they wielded in times past has
been broken. That is the model for what should happen to the major parties in
the United States. The experiment in
self-government is by definition open-ended.
It will only fail if we do not live by the principles laid down in our
founding documents. We must not abandon the experiment. That being said, the
Constitution allows us to modify it as the experiment reveals change is needed.
Part of
the problem with the power of the parties, is that we have somehow come to
believe that this is the way our government is designed to function. It is not. The Constitution never so much as
mentions political parties, let alone the system as it currently stands today.
The Founders were extremely concerned with the concept of unity. In order for
the United States to be a workable concept and be able to function with the
Constitution, unity was paramount. In 1858 Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided
against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure,
permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to
be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” While Lincoln is referencing the issue of
slavery, the principle of his point still stands; divisiveness creates
disunion. In his final address to the American people, the first President of
the United States, George Washington said, speaking about political
combinations, and associations,
They
serve to Organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force--to
put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party;
often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the Community; and,
according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public
Administration the Mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of
faction, rather than the Organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by
common councils and modified by mutual interests.
We must break the power of parties in the
United States by using the power the Constitution grants us: Vote against the
parties until they get the message that the representatives we elect represent
us, and nothing and no one else. We can
do this by never voting for an incumbent again.
As we do this, a pattern of one-term officeholders will emerge, showing
that simply being a Democrat or a Republican is not enough to get anyone
elected. After that, the only thing left
for us to judge a candidate’s fitness for office is that candidate’s ideas to
improve their country/district/etc. And
that is how it should be.
Our
refusal to exercise the power guaranteed us in the Constitution is like the
young person who refuses to grow up and take responsibility for his or her own
life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
President Barack Obama said in a television interview that, “The most
important lesson I've learned is that you
can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the
outside.” One way to change it is to stop electing politicians to
office who will be there for longer than one term. If Washington is so entrenched with
partisanship and corruption that it is not possible for a seeming outsider like
Obama to change the culture, then to change it we need to elect a flood of
outsiders every two, four and six years, until the statement of Martin Luther
King Jr, writing from Birmingham Jail is realized, “Anyone who lives inside the
United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its
borders.” Term limits should be imposed
on every elected office in the United States, not by a Constitutional
amendment, but by the ballots of the voters each election. We would need more
candidates if this were to occur, which would allow ordinary citizens to be
elected to office. The mirror example is
when reserve military personnel are called to active duty. Upon their return,
they are guaranteed the job they left to serve will be waiting for them.
Considering that congress people are not eligible for the congressional pension
unless they have served five years, the pension plan would essentially not
serve Senators and Representatives any longer, saving the taxpayers’ money.
We say
it is too hard to change Washington D.C., but we cannot know that until we have
tried. President Obama himself did not
know it could not be done until he was the president for almost four years. We must use the most fundamental power vested
in us by the Constitution to change Washington; namely, the right to vote. The best part of changing government this way
is that we do not have to wait for the government to fix something for us. It is a false idea that the government is
something separate from the people of this country. That is one of the reasons the power of the
parties must be broken; the false duality of government versus the people
and/or government serving the people is incorrect.
We are
the government of the United States. We
elect representatives to represent us.
Hence, we are the government. As Martin Luther King, Jr, “We are caught
in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” We
have lost sight of that. And in fact we have lost sight of the power of
democracy. Sometimes when a job seems
too hard, we abdicate our power in order to get out of doing it ourselves. We don’t want to take the responsibility of
helping our workplace be an inviting environment, so we put all the blame on
our boss, or his or her boss, or the corporate structure of the company. Which may even be true, but it is not
justifiable to solely blame others when we have not done our part yet. The parties encourage this kind of thinking,
all the while giving the excuse, “it’s not our fault, blame them!” If the United States was a marriage, this
kind of thing would be seen for the immature sham it really is. Imagine two married people both saying to one
another, “it’s not my fault, you made this happen! You got in the way of my dream!” We would see a problem there. If two persons both level the same exact
charge at each other, then we say it takes two to tango, and that is right. We
would tell this couple that they must be more realistic, and must learn to
compromise. If they refused this advice,
we would say they need to end their partnership. The fact that the parties
constantly blame each other for preventing important legislation being passed
is proof of their illegitimacy. As
Washington said, “the common & continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party
are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to
discourage and restrain it.”
Some
say that political reform, revolution and repentance are no guarantees to
future progress. They say that if we fix one issue, that creates a myriad of
other problems. Well, then we will fix
those problems, and then fix the problems the former solutions created, ad
infinitum. An endless cycle of reform
may sound like the worst thing in the world to some, but it is the only thing
that will bring continual progress to this great country. Researchers at The Harvard Business School
have recently done studies about what makes people truly happy, and what they
have found is that, “it’s simply making progress in meaningful work.” (Amabille
and Kramer) That sounds an awful lot like the language of the Declaration of
Independence talking about our right to pursue happiness. We have an
unalienable right, not to be happy necessarily, but to be able to progress
toward happiness and felicity. We must stand up and take our rightful place as
the true source of power that allows this great country to exist and thrive.
Americans are only exceptional when we actually live the principles our
government was founded on. So let us start acting like Americans. And if we
have an unending task of checking and balancing the government before us as a
people, then the great task of guarding and keeping safe the ongoing evolution
of democracy is a cause worthy of giving our time, talents, and our lives to.
WORKS CITED
“Preamble.” United States.
“Declaration of Independence.” United
States.
Washington,
George. “Farewell Address.”
Obama,
Barack. As qtd in Dwyer, Devin. “Obama Says He Can’t Change Washington From
Inside.” ABC News. ABC News. 20 Sept. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
King,
Jr., Martin Luther. “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”. 80 Readings for Composition. Ed. David Munger. n.p. Pearson
Longman, 2006. 245-262. Print.
Amabille,
Teresa and Steven Kramer. “Do Happier People Work Harder?” The New York Times. The New York Times. 3 Sept. 2011. Web. 11 Dec.
2012.
