Perils of the two party system...

It's pretty obvious with what is happening in Washington right now some of the major problems with the two party system. Both sides harp about the constitution and our founding fathers, yet in reality, our founding fathers never wanted nor developed our government for the two party system.

America's political system as set up by our Founding Fathers had no political parties or factions. It wasn't that they didn't know about political parties, but that they were unwanted. When looking at the factions of Europe, our Founders didn't like what they saw - political intrigue, conspiracy, and hostile divisions. They were afraid that such a system would rip apart the Union. They hoped that in free elections it would be natural for the best men to rise to the top and be elected to office. That is why before the rise of political parties the man with the most votes was president and the man with the second most was vice-president. We have been sold into believing that there are only two viable parties because it is much easier for those within those two parties to control and hold power.

Look at the steps that have been taken by those two parties to prevent a third party from gaining power both on a federal and in some states, on a state level. This is a purposeful act to prevent having competition. So the choice we are left with is, Republican or Democrat. You are told to vote third party is "just throwing your vote away" and many americans are buying that sell.

The very thing our founding fathers feared, political intrigue, conspiracy, and hostile divisions is happening right now. In addition one party has gained a clear majority of power that was never intended, and was infact one of the main things to be avoided. Money rules the outcome not who is the best man or woman anymore but in the majority of cases it is who has the most financial support. The whole system is designed to permit corporations and organizations to have more power and influence than we do. We have become for the most part a nation of sheep not willing to vote for individuals anymore, limiting our options. We also have sat back and allowed these two parties to take away our freedom of choice when it comes to political candidates.

We seem to have forgotten that we are the real source of power and have forgotten what our founding fathers warned us of.

To quote George Washington in his farwell address:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. 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 counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they 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 to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.

....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.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction 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's too bad so many of us, including those in Washington, don't remember our history or what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they created our government, perhaps it's time we reminded them......