The Party That Never Ends
Political parties, while important tools for the overall benefit of America’s democratic system, have become overblown and exaggerated, and have lost the efficacy they once held. Nothing proves this so much as a historical look backwards at what America’s political parties have looked like. America has seen many political parties over the years, some of which dissolved over time, others of which transformed into completely new and different shapes, completely unrecognizable from their original forms. The fact that voters in contemporary America cling so tightly to party lines, while these political parties are so subject to change and restructuring, simply lends perspective to how ludicrous modern American political parties are. After all, when the Democrats once believed as the Republicans do, and vice versa, it clearly shows that the political parties of America are not necessarily as definitive as one might have originally thought.
A quick history lesson on political parties: The Democratic Party of America today actually found its origin in the Democratic-Republican Party of 1792. This original political party was founded with a focus on states’ rights, farmers over bankers, industrialists, merchants, and the like (taken from Wikipedia.com). Eventually, the party split into other factions. But in this original form, the political party certainly sounds closer to the Republican Party of today, than it does to the Democratic Party of today. The Republican Party, on the other hand, was originally founded as a very anti-slavery party, with a focus on “free labor, free land, free men.” The Republican political party did not secede from the Union during the Civil War; thus, according to history, the Republican Party is more associated with the north than it is with the south. But in today’s world, the South is generally considered representative of Republicans, and the North of Democrats.
Just these few facts about the political parties which are so powerful in modern-day America clearly shows some of the difficulty in attempting to assign to them any sort of consistent traits or being. Beyond this, modern day political parties hold so many opinions, positions, and beliefs that seem antithetical to the overarching idea of the political party in question that one must examine the whole political party system with a critical eye. The Republican Party of today, for instance, has become dominated by many traits, including a focus on 2nd Amendment rights protection, a focus on religion being endorsed and left unhindered, and a focus on “small-town America,” as best represented in the sayings of Sarah Palin. Simultaneously, the Democratic Party has come to stand for a secular, if not atheistic, viewpoint, coupled with socialist tendencies and a desire for too much government regulation. Of course, all of these ideas about the political parties are likely incorrect, as the political parties span such a vast and varied group of politicians and ideologies that to attempt to define the political parties in any such way is to do them a disservice. But regardless, they often capitalize on these overly simplified, stereotypical images in order to serve their election-based purposes.
In the end, the best way to explain the flaw of political parties is that they serve the American populace very well, right up until the point at which they don’t, though it is very tautological to say so. The two major American parties have come far from what they once were, and have now become somewhat caricatured versions of what they should be. The political parties of America need to be trimmed back into less polarized, more realistic forms, and perhaps the system needs to be opened up to genuinely allow for other political parties to compete with the dominant two. Otherwise, the political parties of America will continue down a path towards creating more trouble than they prevent.
