President Washington recognized the deleterious effects of political parties, which he stated in his Farewell Address, warning that the creation of political parties encouraged the development of vengeful policies which would ultimately lead to tyranny and dictatorship. Despite such cautionary words, two of his closest advisors, Hamilton and Jefferson, not only contributed to the formation of political parties, but they also came to represent the divisions that shaped the early national political landscape which continues to influence Republican vs. Democratic political ideology, or the firmly entrenched thinking of political parties today.

As mentioned in my last Blog, in 1787, Thomas Jefferson was away in France during the Constitutional Convention. Even though our Founding Fathers had some serious reservations about adopting a two-party political system, Jefferson wrote those who were at the convention that he strongly favored two-parties, writing: “Men are naturally divided into two parties those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all power from them into the hands of the higher classes.”

“And those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests.”

What he’s done is divided our political system into two warring, antagonistic camps. One could argue the first party description represent the ‘haves’, the wealthy and upper-middle class, or who, in part, represent the Republicans, and the other party, the ‘have-nots’, the poor and middle class , or who, in part, represent the Democrats. The qualities Jefferson ascribed to each group may or may not possess those characteristics then or today. To the degree his description fits the stereotypic norm in each of his party’s descriptions, we must remember they are simply labels he has assigned the two “classes,” that may or may not be true when examined in a case by case basis.

Premature labeling and defining political parties in that way is wrong, because by describing them in that way promotes biases and premature closure in how we may perceive our political worlds to be. It promotes ‘lazy thinking’, because it will tempt people to take the easy way out by accepting what is offered them, rather than struggling to make sense out of their politics by engaging in their own brand of critical thinking, all done in an effort to formulate a rationale for favoring one politician over another.

As soon as people allow political parties to define their political position, what happens then is that they surrender their ability to think for themselves and allow the political bosses to do the thinking for them.

Being a member of the Republican vs. Democratic Party, here in the 21^st century, should not determine where you stand on specific political issues, yet, in many instances it does. It’s as if by calling oneself a Republican or a Democrat, you have captured the essence of how you view each and every political position. Now that’s not very discriminating is it?

It would be interesting to see what would have happened to our president and vice president selection process if we didn’t have political parties after President Washington’s two terms were completed and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were not sponsored by the Federalists and Democratic-Republican parties respectively. Rather than have that happen, they were chosen like the candidates of the first election were chosen, where the highest vote getter became president, who was Washington and the next highest became vice-president, which happened to be John Adams.