KNAPP: Political parties are inevitable and ugly, but not entirely useless
George Washington, America’s first president, devoted part of his 1796 farewell address to warning against “[t]he alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension.” He feared perpetual war for power between political parties both as “a frightful despotism” in and of itself, and as a prelude to some future tyrant seeking “his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.” Was Washington right? Sort of. Political parties possess all the evil […]
