SomeFYI

Political Parties recognized to be harmful to society

Abstract

History shows Political Parties are unnecessary for a democracy

The founding individuals of the U.S. constitution operated without political parties. Each person in the assembly stood on their own two feet with independent objective thinking. Each person listened and considered others without group bias. George Washington, the first president of the United States, warned Americans not to participate in political parties.²

Political parties represent that their purpose is to endorse and promote candidates for public office. Such function is unnecessary and only serves to have multiple elected officials have allegiance to the same common outside organization. Allegiance of elected officials to a common outside organization lends to a "we vs them" bias and impedes representation.

Various writers have addressed whether political parties help or hinder representative democracy. Political parties are identified to "... provide an easy to understand label for voters to know what policies and values to associate with a particular candidate." and "... enable voters to judge a government or opposition as team rather than individuals". ³ And that "[Political Parties] organize political competition, articulate public demands, and convert these into actionable policies through governance".⁴ These benefits fall in a category of making it easy for voters to vote. Voters simply vote by party name.

Supporters of political parties appear to assert that if we accept "pluralism" - "[the] diversity of opinion, experience, interest, and identity", we accept political parties.⁵ There is disagreement here and contention that the opposite is true. Political parties inhibit pluralism by adopting a position on a multitude set of issues. When one party controls the assembly, societal issues to be addressed does not represent those of the population majority but rather those decided by the political party in control. Moreover, an assembly of independent representatives has far more diversity of opinion, experience, interest, and identity than an assembly made up of representatives allegiant to a common political party.

Further aspects of support include that "[it] is fundamental to democracy: parties' organization of political pluralism and commitment to regulated rivalry and legitimate opposition".⁵ Again, disagreement here. History shows otherwise. Based on the character of political party leaders and their cultivation of their followers, political parties attack or eliminate other rival political parties. ^{6 7}

Elected officials face a multitude of societal issues. The perspective here is that to achieve a successful representative democracy, each issue needs to be considered by all perspectives in the government assembly - not by those prescribed by leaders of an outside political party. A person who adopts all the positions of societal issues dictated by an outside group becomes uninterested to understand the perspective of others in the governing assembly. Government representatives affiliated with a political parties do not consider issues with an open mind.

Even though there may be some benefits of political parties, history has shown that a democracy without political parties is successful and achieves independent objective thought to address societal issues. The magnitude of harm over benefits is overwhelming. The founders of the U.S. had it correct.

The Foundation of Harm to Representative Democracy - Blind group allegiance

Being part of a group is a fundamental characteristic of humans. The problem arises when group allegiance and righteous beliefs causes the group to become blind to immoral activity and evidence of reality. Political Parties are not immune. For example, the Republican party promotes people on the ballot having clear evidence of sexual abuse and felonies.^{1 18} Both the Democrat and Republican parties promote people for government positions that practice open corruption. That is, accepting a "gift" and then voting to provide a targeted government benefit in return to those who provided the gift.^{9 10}

Political parties engage in classic cult techniques to strengthen their members allegiance. Party leaders engage in "we vs them" war of words against other political parties, inundate the public with daily grievance drama and claim verified evidence of reality as being untrue. The U.S. Senate exemplifies the resulting strong group allegiance by having a left and right of the isle.

Government officials who are associated with political parties take roles of leaders or followers similar to a cult - a political cult. Elected government officials associated with political parties blindly follow others perceived as higher level leaders in their political party. Members of political parties become conditioned to negate others. Group allegiance is powerful.

Political parties subvert representative democracy

Currently, political parties promote candidates who engage in open corruption.^{9 10} Elected officials who are members of political parties have passed laws that provide special government rights to their organization over other organizations. These rights include member registration, exclusivity, privilege to the ballot and government promotion.¹⁵ Elected officials who are members of political parties represent their party and those who pay for their influence - not the public.

Elected government officials who are members of political parties further select judges and prosecutors who are members of their same political party. As a result, investigation, prosecution and court decisions are compromised against elected officials in the same political party. It is a conflict-of-interest that judges and prosecutors be members of a political party.¹¹

Studies show that the U.S. public considers political parties as: Divisive, Corrupt, Bad, Messey, Joke, Polarized, [etc].¹² Negative aspects are recognized.¹³ Others recognize that political parties are harmful to society.⁸ Political parties overwhelm government assemblies even though most of the voters are independent.¹⁴

Society and history usually blames evil individual government leaders as the cause societal harm. What is generally ignored, however, is that such individuals ascend to government control because of cultivated group allegiance. It is the human group allegiance aspect of political parties that has allowed characters such as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein to attain government control and perform harm to societies. History affirms that political parties subvert representative democracy.

Political parties subvert family and friend relationships

Political parties have been found to cause significant negative affect on interpersonal relationships.¹⁹ It has been observed that friends and family who are not in the same political party either form deep disagreement or refrain from discussing important societal issues resulting in diminished value of their personal relationships. People in political parties are considered biased to the doctrine decided by their party affecting their willingness to hear, explore and consider perspectives that differs from their party - even facts provided from their own family members.^{20 21}

The road to a fair and just society - what can the public do?

1. If you are a registered with a political party, contact your voter registrar to remove record of your political party affiliation. By not associating with a political party, your right to vote is retained and you have taken a step to "refrain" political parties as expressed by the first U.S. president George Washington. Your action helps the effort to encourage non-corrupt independent objective thinking people to run for public office. To remove your existing political party affiliation, go to https://www.usa.gov/change-voter-registration. For new registration, go to https://vote.gov/register.

2. Ask others to consider reading this article and listen to their perspective.

3. Promote law that prohibits the government from giving special ballot rights to any organization.

4. Promote law that prohibits the government from keeping record of a person's affiliation to any organization as a part of their voting registration.

5. Consider not giving money to candidates. Such activity conditions elected officials to expect personal gifts for their attention and questionable ethics.^{16 17} There is no need for money since candidates can publish their positions for free on the internet.

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