Factions, Parties & the Common Good
How partisanship is the real problem
The Sayings of Abu Francis
I say, Don’t sit on the fence. Take the fence down!
Partisanship has reached a fevered pitch in the United States, where Democrats and Republicans use just about any means necessary to advance their tribe over the other. The two parties have the same basic message: elect us in November or the country will perish. Meanwhile, trust in parties is plummeting, as is voter affiliation with the two major parties. According to Gallup, a record-high 45 percent of U.S. adults no longer identify as Democrats or Republicans, making “independent voters” the largest segment of the polity. George Washington warned about letting factions take control of the government – which they proceeded to do during the tenure of his successor, John Adams.
Factions, or groups formed around competing interests, are indeed natural. The most notable divide in nature is predator versus prey. That big circle of life finds humans in the predator camp, so enthusiastic for domination that people even prey on each other. In terms of Permaculture principles, however, Nature seems to favor integration over segregation.
“The mind may separate elements, species or categories of things, but in the physical world they exist together,” writes Peter Bane in The Permaculture Handbook. “Our design work therefore must consider things as components of integrated systems.” Toby Hemenway cites what he calls the Environmentalist’s Adage: “Everything is connected to everything else.” In Christian lingo, we are “one in Christ.” When parties started to form in the 1st-century Church, St. Paul was clear: “My brothers and sisters ... there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:11-13).
Constitution framer James Madison opined that divisions are inevitable and factions can only cured by either banning free speech and assembly, or making sure everyone has the same opinions. In the Federalist Papers #10 (1787), he argued that elected “enlightened statesmen” would be best equipped to balance competing interests in pursuit of the common good. “Human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good,” Madison lamented.
The Common Good
While not everyone agrees on what constitutes the common good, most would assert that the common good is a worthy cause. The notion has been around since at least Aristotle, but St. Thomas Aquinas took a radical stance (at least by mid-1200s standards) by arguing that kings and princes couldn’t do just anything they pleased. “Tyrannical governance is unjust, since it is ordered to the private good of the ruler, not to the common good,” Aquinas wrote in On Law, Morality and Politics. “And so disturbance of such governance does not have the character of rebellion. Rather, tyrants, who by seeking greater domination incite discontent and rebellion in the people subject to the them, are the rebels.”
Perhaps the common good grows out of common need. There are four things humans need to survive: air, water, food and shelter. (There are myriad things we need in order to thrive, but we can’t survive without these fundamentals.) So, it follows in what Aquinas might have deemed “natural law” that basic rights derive from basic needs. Four human rights.
Yet, the U.S. does not guarantee clean air, clean water, food and shelter to its citizens, only the liberty to pursue them. Air is generally delivered free of charge. Water has traditionally been provided to cities through local government entities called “water districts.” Food and shelter, however, are sold on the open market, often to the highest bidder. Nations that guarantee economic rights (i.e. food and shelter) are called “socialist.”
The common good is the landscape where everybody gets their common needs met. Permaculture could also be called “socialist” in its proclamation that fair share of the surplus is one ethical imperative of a sustainable society. The U.S. Constitution (and American culture in general) does not make any mention of “fair share.” If anything, Americans are encouraged to amass more than their fair share and idolize those who succeed famously in doing so.
Ironically, grandmaster pamphleteer Thomas Paine – best known for 1776’s Common Sense – later argued that the new republic had the responsibility to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
“The earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race,” Paine wrote in Agrarian Justice, a pamphlet he published on the heels of Washington’s Farewell Address. “Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds … to create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of 21 years, the sum of 15 pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance by the introduction of the system of landed property.”
Build bridges, not walls
The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution might give occasion for the country to reevaluate its obsession with partisanship. Partisanship is, by definition, divisive. Red and blue are gang colors. Memes are the bumper stickers of social media. Tribal identities are easier to sell than the long, thoughtful process of building consensus (integration) around the common good.
Political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution and were given no formal powers. Yet the notion that one party or other “controls Congress” is ubiquitous, second nature. Party affiliation is not allowed on ballots in local, nonpartisan elections but is accepted (and expected) in state and federal races. In fact, taxpayers spend billions of dollars every two years to foot bills for partisan primaries.
Moving beyond partisanship is essentially a search for common ground. Asking not, “Do you agree?” but “What can we agree on?” Or “What can we all live with?” Imagine inviting people to discuss abortion rights or climate change, and instead of debating and arguing, spend an hour trying to find one sentence that everyone could agree with? Then find another sentence. And another. Common needs, common rights, common ground, common sense.
Building bridges is better than building walls, I say.
What say you?
