The two party system - the good news

In my previous post I painted a rather dark picure of the future of American politics after the self destruction of the Democrat party. It was a deliberately one-sided view. Now I would like to offer some reasons for hope.

For starters, the loss of one party would not in fact leave the other party utterly devoid of restraint. It so happens that we have another mechanism in place to deal with this. It's called the separation of powers. Here's how it works... suppose the Republicans maintain absolute control over both the White House and Congress for an extended period of time, long enough to become a bit tipsy from the power. There's still the Supreme Court. Conspiracy theories about the 2000 election aside, the fact is the Republicans do not control the judicial branch. It's not uncommon for the highest court to strike down one or another practise with regards to terror suspects or Guantanamo Bay inmates. The administration does *not* always get its way, even on issues concerning national security.

Some of the more dimwitted folk on the left half of the political spectrum chortle with glee whenever this happens. I think they don't fully grasp the implication: that the Democrat party may be expendable. Beware when someone else does your job better than you.

Now, this doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned. As we've established previously, putting a brake on the dominant party is an extremely important function. As a matter of sound engineering, we should have more than one system in place to perform the function. If one should fail - as seems to be happening right now - the other can act as a backup. But what if the backup also fails somehow?

We shouldn't take a chance of this happening. Basic common sense says we should use the reprieve given us by the backup to repair the other system, and without delay. So how do we repair the two party system?

Well, if history is any guide, the system can repair itself. Soon after our Constitution went into the effect, the politicians of our Republic divided themselves into two opposed parties, and they were *not* the Democrats and Republicans. On party was called the Federalists. The other was... wait for it... the Democratic Republicans.

Eventually the Federalists self destructed in a manner closely parallel to what we see happening now with the Democrats. And then there was only one major party. The Era of Good Feeling, they called it. It didn't last. With no external challenge worth taking seriously, internal differences of opinion became dominant, and the part split in two. One half became the Democrat party. The other half was the Whigs, which later morphed into the Republican party. The two party system had arisen from its ashes.

Since then, these two parties have traded places, first one dominant, then the other. There have been third parties galore, but they rarely amounted to anything. Nothing lasts forever. The Democrats are going the way of the Federalists. What will happen next?

I suppose I should mention Hillary Clinton at this point. She's not as far out left as Howard Dean, and she' tacking to the right lately. She could be a candidate for the Presidency in 2008. But she's not the chairman of the party. And the only reason she's not a political extremist is because she's too unprincipled to have any set political position. She a flagrant opportunist, an oily insincere career politician. In a word, she's a Clinton.

She's way smarter than Dean, and she knows what she needs to do. She needs to distract everyone's attention to the madman behind the curtain - Dean, and she needs to make everyone forget everything she's ever said or done before she feinted rightward. Well, she knows how to distract, but she's got a problem. The Repulicans and the bloggers won't let her get away with it for a minute. It ain't gonna happen.

If the Democrat party manages to rebuild itself as a credible political force, it won't be under a Clintonista. Maybe Joe Lieberman can do the job. But it'll be a tough sell regardless.

The more likely scenario is the the Republican party will split in two. What makes this plausible is it's exactly what happened last time. It's not obvious to everyone right now, but there are mahjor differences of opinion in the Republican ranks, and always have been. No, I'm not talking Neocons vs realpolitik. The Henry Kissinger types are finished. And forget the Buchananites. They're a fringe. If they split off, they won't be a major party.

I'm talking big business vs small business. The corporatist faction will have all the money, and that still matters, but not as much as did before blogs. It will matter ever less as time goes by and the blogs take over from other communication channels. The small business faction will be populism done right. Free enterprise! Equality of opportunity! Low barriers to entry for enterprising, hard working American entrepreneurs! Lower business taxes, and no corporate welfare! These are old-fashioned conservative values, and they are in direct conflict with the corporate world.

There's also the Religious Right vs the civil libertarians. This is a significant divide, but I don't see it as enough to split the party along. I'm betting the rift will form along the big business vs small business fault line.

Oh, and the existing third parties? Sorry, not likely. If they ever have a chance, it's now, when things are in flux. But I'm not sure they ever have a chance. They'll enjoy a brief feast of protest votes, but the hollow shell of the Democrat party will be fighting for those same scraps. Then the Republican party will divide in two, and that will be the end of that. The Greens will be as marginal as ever, if not more so. The Libertarians will see their members defect to one or the other of the two new major parties. What's left of the Democrats will probably merge with the Greens, and no one will even notice.

The great and awful thing about the Web is you can't disown your words. You're on record, cached who knows where. Even if you delete a post, it may not be entirely gone. (Remember Michael Moore's Payback Tuesday?) In ten years or so, I'll either be proven right, proven wrong, or proven partly right and partly wrong. That's the chance we all take. So here goes nothing.


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The two party system in America, and why it matters

Almost since the beginning, there have been two major parties in American politics, each a rival to the other. A similar thing has happened in England, prompting Benjamin Disraeli to coin the phrase "two party system." Disraeli also defined the rationale for such an arrangement, declaring that "the purpose of the opposition is to oppose." By this he meant that of the two major parties, at any given moment, one will be in power, and the other will be constantly challenging it. This sets up an adversarial system. It assures competition. The party that appeals most to the voters is rewarded with power, the party that appeals less is punished with second class status. This is as it should be.

But competition is only a good thing so long as it still exists. For the ruling party, competition is accountability. Santayana and others have observed that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's fine for one party to be dominant, so long as its power is short of absolute, and its position is not irrevocable. But if those in power have nothing to fear, then they will act in reckless and harmful ways that will lead to countless evils. Why? Because of human nature. A human personality unchallenged by external pressures will eventually go out of control. We need countervailing forces, to keep us sane, and to keep us from seriously hurting one another. This is why we have society. This is the social contract.

And this is why it is a good thing to have more than one viable major political party. The point of the opposition party is to keep the ruling party on its toes. It is a threat to the ruling party's power, but only if the ruling party goes too far. That's the whole point. As long as the opposition party is a credible threat, the ruling party will be restrained in its actions, and will not be tempted to great evil. And if by some miscalculation it does go too far, it will be voted out. Then the former opposition party will become the ruling party, and the former ruling party will be reduced to the status of opposition.

The party that makes the best appeal to the voters should have the power, and the other party should lack power. But only up to a point. In order for this arrangement to work, the opposition must remain viable. It must be thinkable to the voters for them to vote out the ruling party, and put the current opposition party in its place. The opposition party must be a credible alternative to the voters, in order to be a credible threat to the ruling party. Above all, it must be a *loyal* opposition, clearly having the voters' best interests in mind, if not at heart.

It's the nature of things that we can't have more than two pre-eminent parties in a democratic system. A power law applies. One party will be the ruling party, one party can be the opposition, and other parties are relegated to fringe status. There's nothing to be done to have more than two significant parties. The voters insist on having things tidier than that. But it is possible to have only one. This happens when the opposition party becomes so incompetent or extremist that it is no longer credible in the minds of the voters. And this is precisely what is happening in the United States right now.

As I pointed out before, the Democrat party in America has run off the rails. It has been taken over by ideologues. Even worse, it has been taken over by an ideological faction that has no future. Before our very eyes, it is ceasing to be a credible alternative to Republican power. Leave aside for the moment the question of whether this Republican administration has abused its power. What is to stop the Republicans from going hog wild in the future? Don't talk to me about how the members of one party are all sweetness and light, while the members of the other party are depraved and beyond redemption. These are human beings we're talking about. They all have the same fundamental human nature, and Santayana's dictum applies to them all equally.

Well, that's the bad news. In my next post on this subject, I'll give some facts on the other side of the equation, which will make the picture slightly less gloomy. But for now, please ponder this.


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The decline and fall of the Left in America

The power of the Left as a political force has rested on a tripod of three Big Lies. They are, first, that liberal Western civilization can do no good and is to blame for all the world's evils, second, that Marxist Leninist states can do no wrong, and third, that the Left has the answers to the world's problems. The thing about Big Lies is they have a fatal weakness: they cannot survive exposure to unfiltered information. In the face of raw facts, all Big Lies crumble, and ultimately collapse.

The three Big Lies of the Left have been crumbling in America for quite some now. The problem for the Left is that we have an open society, where the flow of information can never be completely controlled. They have survived by seizing or influencing choke points - where the flow can be partially controlled, and where a sort of imperfect censorship can be attempted, and where that which can't be censored away can be spun beyond recognition. There have been four choke points used by the Left: the universities, the news media, popular entertainment, and the Democratic party. Despite what many on the right allege, the Left's control over these institutions has never been absolute. But at one time it was strong enough to do real damage. This control is slipping, and the Left in America is now facing the abyss.

The control in major universities has been direct. Paranoid Left wingers such as Ward Churchill have attained tenure, and until recently they could spew their poison unchallenged. Their grip is still very strong, because of the tenure system. But if this Churchill affair is any indicator, there are limits to what they can get away with.

The influence over the news media is by way of manipulation. The media love alarmism, scandal and spectacle, and Left provided all of these. Back in the days when TV news dominated public opinion, someone like Walter Cronkite could say "that's the way it is" and be believed without question. Those days are long gone. And now we have the Internet, and blogging. News reportage has been democratised. This choke point is evaporating.

Everyone knows Hollywood is full of "liberals" (squishy left, plus an occasional hard Leftist such as Michael Moore or Oliver Stone. There was a time when movie actors would be called to testify before Congress as expert witnesses simply because they had performed in a movie about the issue. It's been a long while since we took actor's opinions that seriously. Before much longer, I expect Barbra Streisand's ill informed opinions will be the stuff of supermarket tabloids. People are pissed off now, but when they simmer down, they'll stop shouting and start giggling. And that really is the correct reaction.

The control over the Democrat party is by proxy. The Democratic National Committee is dominated by those who call themsleves "liberals" although I prefer the more honest and descriptive term "squishy left." These are the useful idiots, the vain, self-flattering connoisseurs of intellectual fashion, whom the hard, freedom hating Left manipulate. (That goes for Hollyood, too.) They're still idiots, but it seems they're not so useful anymore.

The Left's power in America peaked in the 1970's. That was a crummy decade. All attempts at 70's nostalgia have failed, except the ironic versions that mock the era. Only in a time like that could the Left be ascendant in America. A low point for our civilization is a high point for its enemies, and vice versa. This was the era in which the Left, using the various chokepoints described above, caused the united States to betray South Vietnam and Cambodia to the mercies of their enemies. It was a shameful time.

Since then, it's been all downhill for the Left. America rallied behind Ronald Reagan, because we were ready to rally and he was handy. The terms of the debate were changed. Then the Soviet Union collapsed from our refusal to be its enabler anymore, and the debate was effectively won. But the Left did not humbly admit defeat. They were incapable of that. They were dead-enders, with no future, and no purpose for existence, outside of the sheer thirst for power which their increasingly threadbare ideology clothed.

Now the Left is near the end of its existence as a viable political force in the United States. As it loses control over its information chokepoints, its three Big Lies are becoming increasingly exposed. The Left is dying, and the Leftists know it. They are desperate. They are like a man on a cliff face hanging for dear life to four jutting branches that are about to come loose. He really doesn't care what happens to the branches. He only cares for himself. He can't save himself, but he has nothing to lose by trying.

Every one of these branches is at risk of falling into the abyss in the Left's grasp. These are the chokepoints - academic tenure, the mainstream news media, the Hollywood-based entertainment industry, and the Democratic party. It's all over for the Left. But what will happen to these handholds?

I have no idea what will happen to the tenure system. But it will get ever harder for these enthroned frauds to get the students to listen to them. There's no monopoly here. These kids have the Internet now. Tenured fossils will face a choice - either shut up, or endure the giggles and heckling of snot-nosed brats.

The mainstream media are fading anyway. This has little do with the Left, and a lot to do with technological changes. In the near future, we'll get most of our news from the Internet, and all our opinion and discussion from the blogs. Newspapers will cease to exist as such. Only their online presences will survive as vestiges. TV news will be replaced streaming multicast video. The closest thing to a traditional media chokepoint will be an ISP's gateway page. And Google will always be a click away. Talk radio as we know it will survive, until they invent a wireless broadband that works reliably in a moving car over long distances. Air America will continue to be lame.

Hollywood? They're already catering more to foreign audiences than to Americans. I hear Oliver Stone's Alexander is doing well overseas. But that's all right. We don't need them. Again, technology will democratise entertainment. Independent "cinema" will rule. We'll have to settle for lower production values, at least at first. But there will be more selection, and much better writing.

If Howard Dean becomes chairman of the Democratic party, it will be because the Left's grip on that branch is too strong to be broken. This branch will be torn loose. I believe our two party system will survive, but in altered form. The Democratic party as we have known it will cease to be a player. It may even cease to exist. But let's cross that bridge when we come to it.


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