Fight For Your Right NOT To Party

My surfing today included a stop over at Chickeny Goodness, where today's post led me to an explanation of how to keep safe in the presence of velociraptors. Good to know! Further browsing from there led me to one of the more interesting things I've read in a while:

Washington’s Farewell Address Translated into Everyday Speech

One thing that the author (and I suppose Washington, for that matter) had to say concerned the rise of political parties:

Parties are probably gonna look like they’re helping with one popular issue or another, so you’re gonna want support them, but I bet the guys in charge of them will just turn out to be power-hungry a******* who want to run everything....

I just said that parties are no good, particularly regional ones. But lemme go a step further and say ALL parties are a bad idea.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty much human nature to gather into little factions like this. It’s worst in the freeest countries, and they suffer because of it.

Control goes back and forth between one party and another, and they just get more and more pissed, and we’ve seen that get really bad in the past. But it also leads to terrible, controlling government and general suckage. This gets the people more angry, they get behind one party leader or another, and that guy just takes that support and does whatever he wants, screwing up the country.

I’m not talking about anyone in particular here, but this isn’t necessarily too far off, and it’s always gonna be a threat, so keep an eye out.

This division distracts us, enfeebles the government, it gets everyone riled up with jealousy and false alarms, it pits us against each other, and eventually creates riots and stuff. It also opens the door to other countries getting a hand in our system, since they can reach in through the party structure, and then we just become their puppets.

Now, there’s the idea that the parties are important to defend freedom and put the government in its place. That might even be true sometimes; when you’ve got a real Nazi in charge, you can afford to rally behind a party, but you shouldn’t like it, and you should dump it ASAP. And there’s always gonna be a feeling of opposition to whatever the government is, so be sure you know what you’re doing before getting all partisan, and be very careful to know when to drop it so you don’t just make the problem worse.

Reading this, I can't help but think that George Washington was a man ahead of his time—211 years ahead of his time, to be exact.

Republicans. Democrats. A pox on both their houses for their jealousies and false alarms and factionalism. And a pox on each of us, we average American citizens, for letting things get this bad.

(For the address as originally written, try this link.)