“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.”
– Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Henry Lee, 1824)
Bingo!
Add unto these Pournelle’s Iron Law –
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Heinlein’s second type would be the former in this one and his first, the latter.
Patrick
Another way to put it is that humans can be categorized into those who know themselves destined to rule others, and those who know themselves hard pressed to rule themselves.
One of the great unmentionable manias of our age is the thirst to run other people’s lives.
Statists and libertarians.
Two parties can be described mathematically by Schellings tipping model and the checker board model of social interation.
People who want to be ruled and people who want to be let alone.
Thus putting fascists and communists together at the same end of the spectrum, rather than at opposite poles as todays leftist media would have us believe…
Dynamists v. Stasists, per The Future and its Enemies, V. Postrel (1999).
A modern prayer: Lord, please rescue us from those who would help us.
Another apt Jefferson quote about political parties:
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. – Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789.
Years ago I held a temporary job as a cashier at a local electric coop. One of my duties was to open the night drop and post the payments that had been left since the last close of business.
Every day there was a payment from someone who didn’t include a bill statement. My job then was to run down which account the payment went to. It became obvious fairly quickly that I was performing this service for the same handful of people every month. The contempt I began to have for these individuals eventually drove me to quit that assignment.
I cannot imagine the psychosis that must possess those who want to be in charge of the lives of people who don’t care to look after their own. Such people need to find something harmless to do, like hoard cats.
“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth–” This was stated by Lazarus Long and documented by Robert A. Heinlein in “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long”. Lazarus also stated – “Always store beer in a dark place.” With advice like that, you can’t go wrong.
And where is the US Constitution in this divide? Please help, I can’t figure it out. The Senate was designed to be an upper body of elite people who would put the kibbosh on the populist loonies who’d drift with every pressure group and dissolve into factions. The electoral college was designed to insulate the choice of President from direct control by the people. Yes, I know that later reforms have weakened these original ideas over time, but that same process of reinterpreting the Constitution has also led to making the states lose much of their sovereignty to Washington, and to Congress turning us into an evolving nanny-state. It seems to me that, where we are, is a nation where democracy is tolerated only if it keeps electing control-minded elitist to Congress, so that the original individual liberty idea has been turned into a system of more apparent democracy, and less personal independence. I don’t even know what kind of a country this is anymore. I know that the original idea was federalism and individual liberty, but I think both have been lost on the altar of modern liberalism, run by elites.
Maybe both parties are on the same side and want to control different parts of Americans lives. That would best describe our current situation.