In Favor of Partisanship and Factions

"Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires… As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed... …The absolute rights of all free men, in or out of Civil society, are principally personal security, personal liberty and private property… The Legislature has no right to absolute arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people.” James Madison

What our founding fathers knew is that in order for a free society to form and prosper, one based on treating everyone equally and treating each other decently, we would need to tolerate and support different factions of people fighting one another. These factions, whether they be political parties, interest groups, or other groups in society, are free to argue about the nature of government and government's role as much as they want, as long as they respect people's right to life, liberty, and property, since the government never has any power over these. But all other partisanship is okay, and indeed, even to be encouraged.

While some in our government, mainly Obama and the Democrats, argue that partisanship is bad and that we need to rely on their vision of selfless disinterested fighting for the people, what they really mean is that they want people to give up their struggle for their life, liberty, and property and to roll over and give in to the tyrannical vision the Democrats would subject on the people if they were not continually blocked and opposed by the most bitterly partisan of Republicans.

The White House is trying to end 'partisanship', its latest ploy being a health-care summit on Thursday. The President claims that this will restore everything to normal again, and we'll have two parties talking things out, bipartisanship flowering, order restored.

This is a vision of tyranny, and a romantic vision at that- never in our history has there been anything like this, except when one party dominated, and that was always to detriment of the nation. Bipartisanship and order restored sounds to me like a rubber stamping of skyrocketing debt and increased statist control of our lives, and in no way should that be supported.

And besides, Obama doesn't want these, any more than my Congressman, Gary Peters, wants bipartisanship, conversation, communication, openness, or any of the other stuff that they were elected to do. Obama wants to use this chance to browbeat Republicans, as he understands bipartisanship to mean the end of all opposition to his rule. Gary Peters used his townhall to only meet with imported healthcare supporters and has continually locked out any of his constituents from meeting with him, all while claiming to be open and accessible.

Partisanship is good, as long as it opposes tyranny and fights tooth and nail for life, liberty, and property rights for all.