Not just a two party system. They believed representatives should be elected according to their own character rather than party affiliation.

too bad it didn't happen

He was on Maddow's show and made the salient point that the big donors who control DC give to both parties - and that's why we only get discussion around a narrow band that still leans conservative. We got health care reform but still get big pharma and big insurance to skim millions in salaries, etc.

We need public funding of elections and IRV - then other parties would have a chance.

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''Life is too important to be taken seriously.'' ~Oscar Wilde

What do you think they meant by "no factions?"

I'm one of those controversial people who say I wish my country would get over the Founding Fathers (or failing that, perhaps even call them "The Founders," as fathering had nothing to do with it). This awe sometimes turns my stomach. Read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and Thaddeus Russell's A Renegade History of the United States and you come out with a better idea of what the Founders were about.

It's the Founders design failure that saddles us with two parties. Other countries see the their legislature as sort of interface between parties and government. Our Constitution doesn't even deal with parties, because the Founders thought we could do without them. To be accurate, they wanted to establish a one-party state where the government was the party, and the party was all made up of rich, privileged white men. For the ones who actually wrote the Constitution, historically, there's no doubt about this.

However, they failed, and they way they failed ensures that the Congress isn't set up to work with parties. So, the system can sustain only two. Basically, the conservative establishment party (Republicans) and most other people (Democrats).

The only time this country has sustained more than two parties, has been either fleetingly for one election, or when one of the two parties is dying (the Whigs). However, in fact, for a fairly long period, between 1820 and 1850, there was really only one party. And the period was known for its extension of slavery, and conquest of the Indians and war with Mexico.

Meanwhile, a one party state is associated with totalitarianism. So, please don't quote people who quote the Founders with awe about what they predicted. They weren't prophets.

be enshrined and wrapped up in a delusion of divinity, that happened well after the fact.

On leaving the final meeting of the constitutional convention, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked, "Doctor Franklin, what did we get, a democracy or a republic?". He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."

They were aware of what it was they were attempting, and they were acutely aware of the forces that opposed it. They did what they could and left it to us improve and refine what they started. The failure is ours.

It gets stuck deciding which way to go around a twig and dies of thirst.

Corporate money doesn't care and it defines who the real players are.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.



Letter to Abigail Smith Adams from Paris while a Minister to France (22 February 1787), referring to Shay's Rebellion. "Jefferson's Service to the New Nation," Library of Congress

I've been saying this for a LONG time now. It's the only way to explain why President Obama is on board with drones, killing people without trial, including Americans, the bailouts, Tar Sands, Arctic Wildlife drilling, fracking (coming soon to California's Central Valley where we grow your food), and all the other corporate-friendly policies with which this Administration seems to be so enamored.

Two hundred years later, George Carlin echoed those same sentiments when he claimed that we don't have a choice, we have the illusion of choice. During the 2008 primaries, the top two candidates were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clue phone: they were the same candidate! And anytime someone whom the Party Bosses don't approve of gets even close, they "Dean" him/her. It's why I fear for Elizabeth Warren. They'll do the same to her if she gets close to winning the nomination.

There's a Frank Zappa quote that I think is apropos here:
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

It's why I hate partisan politics.

It's just a de facto two-party system. In reality, we have several parties. It's just that two of them include the vast majority of voters as official or unofficial members. Other parties exist and field candidates for elected office, but rarely succeed in gaining enough votes to be noticed much.

A two-party system developed because it represents the easiest way to present candidates of differing viewpoints. At any time, another party could play a role in any election, and has.

Some people pretend that the Founding Fathers weren't landowners. Our version of the aristocracy. Slave owners for the most part as well. The elite. In the beginning, you even had to be a property owner in order to vote. Get a clue people.

Sure, in the beginning they were protecting landowners' interests and now it's corporate interests. But make no mistake: those Founding Fathers were protecting their self interests as the elite and wrapped it up in lofty language. Just like our politicians do today.

In refusing to incorporate parties In Forming A Government, they ensured 2 major parties that were and ARE beyond the control of government. And private money controls those 2 major parties, doesn't it? Those 2 major parties run the country and the word "party" never appears once in the constitution. Funny, though, that the parliamentary rules by which Congress conducts business all revolve around 2 parties, isn't it?

You'll only get this when you realize that Britain has a more representative government than we do because they can form a government by coalition, not winner-take-all.