People should be careful of what they wish. Now they want to abolish political parties. They make very serious complaints about them. Some of the complaints are quite valid. Some are just smoke. The only problem is that they need to think long and hard about what replaces them before they suggest a really stupid move.
Our favourite argument amongst the stupiditsia (the opposite of intelligentsia) is that municipal politics gets along just fine without political parties. Frankly, municipal politics would run much better if the political parties and their organizers were never allowed within a kilometre of city hall. If you cannot figure out which party more than three-quarters of your city council belong, you are obviously not paying attention. All parties use municipal politics as a training camp, a bull pen and a convenient dumping ground for political wannabes and has-beens.
But the idea of abolishing political parties has merit. There is little doubt that the original concept of political parties passed into antiquity many years ago. And it was a pretty good idea in its time. It allowed for like-minded legislators to work together to form a functioning government, choose a leader, bring in new business and participate in bringing good order and governance to the citizens.
Where it all fell apart was when the idiots we elected decided they knew more than the citizens. They thought they were there to rule the citizens instead of providing a service. They chose their leader and made the person an autocratic emperor who could tell everyone what to do. And that in turn created an opposition that spent entirely too much time telling the emperor what he could do with himself. It became somewhat unruly.
If we did away with political parties, we would need to have some sort of endorsement system to make sure we did not all send the village idiot to our parliaments. Let’s say there is a candidate endorsed by the Fraser Institute. You would know that this person is in favour of right-wing causes. Conversely a person endorsed by the Laurier Institute might be in favour of more liberal laws. And (keeping it simple) a person endorsed by the local labour council might be understood to be more socialistically inclined. It would be much more interesting when more groups started endorsing candidates and voters would have a matrix of endorsements to consider. We might even start to get better politicians.
But you get the idea. There are many possibilities other than political parties to consider. We should open the floodgates of dialogue.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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