"Roses are Red...."

"Violets are Blue I hate the democrats and the G-O-P too!" A differently winged friend of mine on Facebook posted that couplet a few hours ago. Which in turn gave me to think that his animosity is in the face of the Founding Fathers who bequeathed to him a republic that had as few political parties as were strictly necessary. Those "Old Time Men" (to quote Mister Lincoln) had nigh mutually exclusive concerns when they were writing the US Constitution fear of domestic tyranny at home, a perfect terror of international impotence and recolonization from without. So the government they forged could never be too strong for the individual nor too weak to confront a foreign foe. Read "The Federalist Papers" if you don't believe me, Hamilton et al were obsessed with the possibility of recolonization or a nation whose "commercial commitments" were unreliable. Their solution was national unity at home by way of a Federalist Constitution and a government capable of treating with foreign powers from a position of relative strength. The Bill of Rights which came in the wake of the constitutional convention was in itself an attempt to conciliate doubtful factions within and without the Constitutional Convention. So from the git go, those "Old Time Men" had to satisfy purely political concerns...but that didn't mean they had to back a system that surrendered too much power to too few well placed partisans...hence our "winner take all" state and national elections which to this day are a barrier to third, fourth and fifth parties too easily playing for power. "Liberty is to Faction as Fire is to Oxygen"....but that doesn't mean that the purely Federalist Style of Governance that we've fallen heir to, prefers a multiparty platform. Is that fully democratic? No. Is it tradition? Yes. Is there a reason for that tradition? Yes. The Founders feared partisan strife seeing it as the downfall of every single republic memorialized in their personal libraries they couldn't abolish faction but they could canalize it via one-winner elections and divided governance. In short they had to steer a middle course thru tyranny and chaos....what we have now is the end result of that choice. So...welcome to canal living one and all....