<p>I'm having a hard time relating George Washington's Farewell Address in the book "Founding Brothers" to the US in the modern world today. I don't know much about the structure and political activities in the US today and I've tried googling things about whether or not we have "national unity" and "excessive partisanship" but neither had a definite answer. I'm guessing that these topics are more subjective but I still need some form of evidence or fact to back by opinions up. Can someone till me how I can relate this to something I'm not familiar with? Thanks.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if we have "excessive partisanship" today? Can someone please point me in the right directions? </p>
<p>I have to relate the US to what George Washington said: "He denounced excessive partisanship, most especially when it took the form of political parties pursuing a vested ideological agenda or sectional interest groups oblivious to the advantages of cooperation." </p>
<p>Thanks so much!!</p>
<p>"He denounced excessive partisanship, most especially when it took the form of political parties pursuing a vested ideological agenda or sectional interest groups oblivious to the advantages of cooperation." </p>
<p>According to what George Washington said I would think we don't have excessive partisanship because the parties are not "oblivious to the advantages of cooperation" but instead try to do their best to gain cooperation from the nation's peoples. Rather, both of the parties aim to "manipulate and fix" their agendas to fit the people's needs.</p>
<p>However, the Dems and Reps have behind it all their own "ideology" right? They still have a traditional way of doing things despite the opinions of the majority? How do people choose between the two? According to their websites, both of the parties seem to have pros...</p>
<p>Both have pros, both have cons. Liberals tend to go with Democrats, Conservatives tend to go with Republicans. In theory, both seek to make the world "a better place". They differ on social issues (gay marriage, abortion, the environment), and also economic theory (liberals favor gov't intervention to help the poor and uninsured, conservatives favor reducing the taxes that generate these benefits to help corporations, which is supposed to indirectly "trickle down") We will, find, however, that both major parties will lie within a very stable centrist zone, avoiding radicalism on both sides of the political spectrum.</p>
<p>As to George Washington's Farewell Address, the ideal that Washington strove for was a Congress whose elected representatives would voice the interests and concerns of their regions, not a central party. While this is still somewhat manifested, increasingly we find that regional concerns are shoved aside in favor of national concerns of the respective parties (for 2006, that would've been Iraq) In addition, by having political parties, especially only two of them, the nation itself would be polarized. What we see now is a clear and marked difference between the Republican South and the Democratic Northeast. The Founding Fathers, with good reason, feared that such polarization would tear apart the nation (Civil War), and should have been avoided.</p>