In the election of 1992 James Carville, advisor to Bill Clinton, nailed the primary issue as, “It’s the economy, stupid!” And, that’s the way it was, and is, and will probably continue to be until we socialize the American economy like all the other progressive nations in the world.
I’m writing this week’s column on Sunday afternoon as usual and have no idea how the election will end. “Que sera, sera.”
How do Americans generally decide for whom to vote? Do we vote for party candidates or for candidates who are popular? Do we vote by issues or by popularity? Do we vote for change, or do we vote to keep doing what we’re doing?
George Washington, our first president and one of our founding Fathers, warned about the dangers of political parties in his farewell address. “Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.”
We’ve lived the truth and comedy of Washington’s warning.
In one of his posts in the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote the following. “A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Just like George Washington, James Madison warned that governments operate under the whims of human nature raising the question of how to keep governments true and just.
Then there was Thomas Jefferson, more of a party of one. He famously said, "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." I believe Jefferson also said something about separation of church and state, though that likely would not apply to political parties, or precluded opinions about going to heaven.
National elections since 2016 have mocked the old counterculture soul song “War” written in 1969. “Voting, huh. Yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’.” Regardless, the 2026 midterm election has set the tone for the next two years.
Daniel L. Gardner is a columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at PJandMe2@gmail.com.
12 comments:
Democracy doesn’t work. Don’t believe me?? Is your home a democracy??
No , DL...it's competence vs incompetence. Not all of us walk in goosestep with a political party or try to convert everyone to our religion. You may have missed that not all Protestants are evangelical and most of us like freedom of and freedom from a STATE FORCED RELIGION! We also have seen grandfathers in our communities become demented or senile. Frankly, the GOP cabinet should have invoked the 25th Amendment and not become rubber stamps ...cowardice really to put their party before the Nation when their party leader can even speak in coherent sentences anymore.
We have strayed so far from ideas of the men who founded this Country, The new song should be Constitution…what is good for ..Absolutely nuthin
Having the right to go voting for Somalian women married to their brothers and trans women kindergarten teachers is what the greatest generation fought the Nazi's for. Is DL a Nazi or something?
You must have seen the handwriting on the blue wall
10:17 AM You don't have that right because you live 1000 miles away. Why do you know more about what's going on up there than down here. The people up there have that right and they exercised it. They also have the right to remove her and choose not to over and over. Are you anti-voting rights? Is it you trying to make all the decisions? That sounds authoritarian and fascist which is what the greatest generation ACTUALLY fought against.
"This isn't a cheer-ocracy, I am the cheer-tator, I make the cheer-isions, I will deal with the cheer-onsequences."
We should stop saying "Socialist". Socialist only Sweetens what is to come...Communism. It's like saying "She's a Little Pregnant, it sweetens what is to come...Never Vote Communist!
Don't pay attention to all the distractions. Some people claiming to be Republicans failed because they weren’t true conservatives. Conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed by weak-minded people who refuse to properly follow its tenets. It’s a lot like communism that way.
Voting keeps the sheeple thinking they have a voice and a choice.
@12:04 AM
It wont be this election that does causes this nation to fall into communism. Late Stage Capitalism will be the cause of that. The dollar today is worth a fraction of a cent compared to the 1913. That is the year the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was passed. That private bank (with no reserves) has robbed this nation. And that was the plan all along since the Federal Reserve was founded by a group of cultural Marxists. It now costs $1 trillion a year to service that debt. Do you think the Republic will last long enough to pay it back?
Moral decay, dishonesty and outright criminality such as fraud and sex crimes (along with coverups involving church related sex crimes) is as rampant in churches as it is in big business and Hollywood big media.
Conservative Christians of all varieties whether Evangelicals, Catholics, or snake handling Pentacostals, must get past their misogyny, gender ignorance and bigotry if they don’t want to be left to wither on the vine.
These folks can either change their ways or they can sink and take down the politicians that either are from their flocks or kowtow to them to get elected.
1204
Explain the difference
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