George Washington Warned About Parties

Last year I belatedly in life became aware that George Washington left our fledgling nation an admonition in 1796 (which kernel of an idea probably sprouted in or about 1792) about the dangers of political parties to the good of the nation in what would later become viewed as his farewell address not unlike Dwight D. Eisenhower's much more famous "Military Industrial Speech" in his own farewell address 165 years later in 1961. If Wikipedia's analysis is any indication then most people seem not to notice let alone heed the anti-partisan tone of it... perhaps because the authors are collectively party animals. Read the words and marvel at their prophetic and visionary relevance today as to what dangers lay (and still lay) down the path of partisan politics and the two-party Democratic-Republican duopoly which has now parasitically subverted our Republic and threatens the commonweal of the nation.

"17 All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

18 However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

View source HERE.