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A little something to remember when you go and thumb through your Republican or Democratic Party playbook..........
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
JOHN ADAMS, letter to Jonathan Jackson, Oct. 2, 1789
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in thecourse 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.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
"A pure democracy . . . can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction [parties] . . . . There is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party . . . . Hence it is that such democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been a short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." --James Madison
"And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters?" Benjamin Franklin
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty." - George Washington
The early founders were not fond of democracy and set up balances against it such as state rights and Senators being choosen by state reps.
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