Yes, I'm also a Party Pooper

Yes, I absolutely detest parties...political parties that is, of any stripe, color or fancy name.  But, I am in very good company (the first four presidents of the US to drop a few names)...and none other in particular than George Washington...but more on that later.

To understand how I got to this conclusion on parties, you have to understand my view of humanity.  I believe that humans do have completely unique abilities and capabilities.  Among these are the ability to form individual views and conclusions based on questioning and exploring the world around us...where they came from, which of the several thousand identified or sanctified dieties gave them to us is of absolutley no interest to me.  I believe humans were meant to rise above that sort of thing, and be always forward-looking, always trying to understand given their talents and abilities, and within their limitations. 

We are also given the unique ability to reason with each other, and compromise, and reach an agreement -- the best of these, as embodied by the Greek Senate, the Magna Carta, and other examples past.  Witness our own US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and other thoughts as written by the founders of the USA; along with those like Lincoln who held it together when smaller minds would tear it apart are the finest examples.  They demonstrate a unique ability on our part to place the good of the many above the good of the few when it counts.  Even our close relatives in the simian world don't get too far into a disagreement before they end up bashing each other in the head to "settle" it.

I think the mark of true 'intelligence' is to fully realize that no one person or set of dogmatic statements can possibly be true or even useful for all possible situations.  Life is too rich and wonderful and full of surprises...and you deliberately shut yourself off from the world if you choose to take a head-in-the-twelfth-century-sand approach of following stone tablets, or scrolls, or whatever without thinking.

Now, back to the political party thing...I think the first silent admission that anyone joining a political party absolutely has to make is that:

"I confess I am too (stupid, unintelligent, uneducated, lazy) to make up my own mind on any topic of significance. I am much more comfortable with a set of rigid rules and positions made by others to which I can blindly subscribe without thinking....(and what color flag I am supposed to be waving by the way)?".

Many people aligning with one political party or another are just looking for an easy way out --- democracy and in fact being a thinking human being are supposed to be hard work, and take some investment of time and study.  Cable TV news these days of any stripe other than the BBC or PBS is worthless tripe, and you sure won't find enlightenment among the airheads of Survivor, American Idol, DWTS, America has Talent, etc..BTW - do you realize we are beaming this crap off into space in all directions as the indicator to others that this is the height of our civilization????.

Most of the Founding Fathers detested the idea of political parties or at the least had serious misgivings about them.  George Washington nailed it rather eloquently in his Farewell Address:

"They [political parties] 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.

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."

That language is probably a bit beyond the Twitter, Facebook, Fox News, and text crowd, but what he said, roughly translated to the vernacular is:

Political parties organize special interest factions and pretend it is the will of the people when in fact it is nothing more than the careful campaign of a small minority pushing forward their ill-advised and divisive ideas, rather than the plans raised together by people working in concert for the common good.

However popular these factions may be to a  minority, they will in time become self-sustaining entities which ambitious men will use to subvert the power of the people, and gain for themselves the power of government, destroying afterward the very processes and institutions that allowed them to rise to their dominance.

And that, dear reader, as expressed by George Washington more eloquently than I ever could...is why political parties are at the root of everything that is wrong in Washington DC.