Polistitution

There is one thing that can be the death of any conversation, the death of many relationships, and frequently the deaths of a great many foreigners: politics.

In our great nation, we only have two parties that have any power. The DNC (Democratic National Committee, or Democrats) and the GOP (Grand Old Party, or Republicans). Each of these parties was founded very long ago on very different platforms than they have today. Oddly, contrary to one's expectations, the Democratic Party is far older than the Republican Party.

The Democratic-Republican Party was founded in 1792 by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others as a counterparty to the Federalists. As soon as our nation was founded, there were some who immediately wished that the power of the federal government be increased, despite the fact that one of the founding principles of our nation was that of the independent State (ie: The United States). The people who believed that were believed to be in control of the Washington cabinet, and certainly John Adams was among them. The victory of the Jefferson campaign was the first major victory for the Democratic Party.

The Federalists faded almost as quickly as they had come around. The party died out, some of its members literally, in the wake of the war of 1812. They were replaced with a party that reminds us frequently of the UK, and more often of business interests, the Whig party. This remained the power structure until the issue of slavery divided the nation in the 1850s. The foundations of the GOP came as a result of the fact that most Democrats were pro-slavery and enough Whigs were to split from each of their parties to form the new Republican Party. The first President of this party, you may well know, was Abraham Lincoln.

The foundations of each party were differences of opinion from previously existing parties. The Democrats, originally, were a party that was chiefly interested in the rights of individual states to determine their own destiny. The Republicans, initially, were composed of people who were against slavery and so strongly for national unity that they took us to the bloodiest war in United States history to preserve it. At the time of their founding, both parties were rising to a necessary call that forever determined the course of United States history.

Today, the Democratic Party is held together and defined by the Democratic National Committee. They write the platform for this party, and anyone who has read that platform can testify that it is atrocious, idealist, and illogical. It's not that the ideas presented in the party platform are terrible, but its that their method of execution is. The Democratic Party makes such an effort to protect the middle class, that they risk destroying it through their own efforts. Increasing taxes on large corporations, making it more difficult to outsource labor, and making the practice of granting CEOs large bonuses when they're operating bankrupt companies can only serve to hurt our national economy. If you don't believe me, then ask what talented CEO would try to save a company that was in trouble if they were guaranteed no bonuses for doing so? What company would set up business in the United States if they would be presented with barriers to outsourcing and an increased tax burden? Then ask yourself, what would that do to the workers of America?

This is, of course, grossly oversimplifying the Democratic party, and only one minor critique.

The Republican Party, these days, seems to be focused on the opposite plan. They wish to deregulate nearly every industry, but provide large tax breaks to only the wealthy and large corporations. These tax breaks, of course, are funded by cutting public programs. Under the Reagan Administration, you may recall that school funding was cut to such a point that school bands and football teams needed to start looking for corporate sponsorship. Their idea of fighting a war against Terrorism is to turn the United States into a surveillance state, and threaten to invade every nation that speaks a harsh word to us.

If you're like me, you find yourself asking why either of these parties have any support. One wants to prevent businesses from firing people at any cost, the other wants to reward businesses that fire people in hope they'll have enough money to hire them back. One wants to see that free healthcare is only provided to those who have demonstrated economic need due to severe poverty, the other would like to see the entire country foot the bill for everyone who has cancer. One thinks the path to a strong nation is sending our troops to the other side of the country to overthrow a government and police a people who never wanted us there, the other believes that we should stop research and close our military bases.

There is only one fact that we can turn to in all of this, and that's that over the past twenty years, the GOP has utterly failed to do anything positive for this nation. We know their policies, we know their practices, because we've seen them all enacted. Whenever the GOP gets control, things always get worse. The GOP can't do anything major without some kind of scandal involved, with the exception of George H.W. Bush. Under the Reagan Administration we hung our Marines out to dry in Lebanon, sold weapons to one of our promised enemies and used the profits to fund a revolution in a democratic nation, ensured that a fundamentalist government that would later strike us a devastating blow would come to power, and somehow elected a Republican for the third term in a row afterwords. Under George Bush we've had the Patriot Act, economic crisis, gas crisis, a war with a nation based on false pretense, torture, and illegal surveillance.

On the other hand, Bill Clinton had two scandals, both of which completely unrelated to how he ran the country. Under Clinton our country delivered a balanced budget, assistance in war-torn nations with UN support, and built the framework for both the largest economic upswing and crash we've ever seen.

It seems that no matter how silly the DNC platform looks on paper, the Democrats do it better. It seems that no matter what the GOP thinks, they've been thoroughly proven wrong, whereas the DNC platform has never been fully tested.

The real truth is, though, that both party platforms are nothing more than pandering to the electorate. Very little unites the people in these parties, and the people who compose them span across the board in both liberal and conservative directions. The parties exist much as a pimp does, to sell you a person who will provide you with what you ostensibly need. They do not currently do anything else.

It's time for a new party, one that actually matters. In the meantime, vote Democrat. It's time for the Democrats to show us how thoroughly they can fail, we already know how much the GOP can. Perhaps when we've seen just how terrible both parties are in recent memory, people will finally tire of them.