Why didn't we listen to George Washington?

Naru · March 23, 2015, 01:43:21 PM

We should've been an isolationist country and have no 2 party system, where did we go wrong? Washington wanted the country to do well, but we backtracked in politics according to his beliefs.

Should we have listened to him?

More Than Mortal · March 23, 2015, 02:01:16 PM

Quote from: Naru on March 23, 2015, 01:43:21 PM

have no 2 party system

The Federalist who opposed the Democratic-Republicans wanted no two-party system?

🍁 Aria 🔮 · March 23, 2015, 02:03:14 PM

I can get being against a two-party system, but isolationism? That would never have worked well.

Naru · March 23, 2015, 04:37:27 PM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on March 23, 2015, 02:01:16 PM

Quote from: Naru on March 23, 2015, 01:43:21 PM
have no 2 party system
The Federalist who opposed the Democratic-Republicans wanted no two-party system?

I believe he didn't want it.

Korra · March 23, 2015, 05:33:41 PM

Forgewolf · March 23, 2015, 07:29:34 PM

The two party system was never meant to happen.. If you look at America's past.. we use to have around six main political parties?

Risay117 · March 23, 2015, 07:31:58 PM

Actually federalization could have been the problem.

Naru · March 23, 2015, 10:20:14 PM

Quote from: Forgewolf on March 23, 2015, 07:29:34 PM

The two party system was never meant to happen.. If you look at America's past.. we use to have around six main political parties?

Any party system is fucked.

BrenMan 94 · March 24, 2015, 08:42:39 AM

Quote from: Prime Meridia on March 23, 2015, 02:03:14 PM

I can get being against a two-party system, but isolationism? That would never have worked well.

Less isolationist and more non-interventionist. Obviously trade is very important to a country's economy, but war isn't (unless it's profiting the arms manufacturers).

CK97 · March 24, 2015, 10:26:48 AM

We should've listened to him about political parties, but not about being isolationists.

Azumarill · March 24, 2015, 03:14:24 PM

this is kind of a vague question.... with a LOT of fucking answers. ask me something specific and ill dig through my volumes and pick something out.

Azumarill · March 24, 2015, 03:40:44 PM

im gonna try to cook something up for you anyway... bear in mind, this is the result of extremely cursory research and what little colonial history i know off the top of my head.

in his farewell address, washington stressed the importance of national unity, stating that our nationality ties us together. that unity, he said, was going to be our greatest martial strength, our greatest economic stimulant, and the leg on which liberty stands. now, whats important here is context: we had just shaken the effects of the articles of confederation, which threatened to establish a confederacy instead of a centralized federal government. so, washington used that rhetoric about unity to help remind us of the dangers of partisanship in government.

now, in the latter part of his speech, he talks about political parties specifically. he says that we should beware the "spirit of party" because the party system allowed for an "artful minority" to control the masses- he was essentially warning us about the potential of representative democracy to morph into something eerily similar to oligarchy. washington was right to be concerned about that. it represents the "other extreme" with regard to the dangers of democracy, the first being its tendency to develop into a tyranny of the majority.

superficially, party politics back then were pretty similar to our parties of today. politicians talked all that good shit about each other, engaged in smear campaigns, gerrymandered, played to the whims of their demographics, all that. but the big difference between then and now is the money behind the politics; by my estimation, washington never could have imagined the scope of the marriage between big money and politics that we have born witness to today.

so, when we think about what he said today, we think about it in our own context. however, that leads us to the wrong conclusions; instead, we must look at it through washingtons perspective. only then can we find the truth of his philosophy.

"isolationism" is an entirely different can of worms.