Wrote one reader, in response to my recent post about the end of political parties:

All of this post-partisan stuff is rubbish. People will disagree with each other for as long as there are politics and people to take part in them.

While this reader might be surprised to hear it, I agree. I have no expectation that the end of political parties would end political disagreement. To the contrary: I know political disagreement will survive. Further, I believe it should survive. Disagreement can be good; it can sharpen the minds of debaters and improve the solutions they recommend. So I anticipate the end of political parties not to lose the benefits of political argument, but to yield more productive argument.

Political parties have a way of subverting argument, of turning it into a war of personalities rather than a battle of ideas. As former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards writes in the fourth chapter of his book, Reclaiming Conservatism:

Partisanship for its own sake reduces politics to a cynical game of personal advantage … When one’s party rather than one’s constituency becomes the most important factor, it creates a natural tendency for members of that party to follow the leader.

In other words, when parties dominate politics, ideas are not debated on their merits but on the basis of (a) who suggested them, (b) whether or not the suggester was a member of the “correct” party, and (c) whether or not the “correct” party’s leader approves.

Thus the desire to end political parties is really a desire to make politics, per Edwards, not just another term for war, but a legitimate, honest “debate about alternatives.” Is that possible in a single-party system? Thurman Hart suggests how it can be:

Our system almost always results in one of two conditions: a two-party system with competing parties, or a single-party system with competing factions.

Precisely — and competing “factions” or “caucuses” often provide a much better forum than parties do for debates about alternatives, because factions and caucuses (often though not always) form and dissolve on the basis of principles rather than their own self-preservation.

Consider the “Blue Dog Democrats.” The members of that caucus are largely focused on fiscal responsibility. If caucus members are loyal to that principle, they remain in the caucus. If they are disloyal to that principle, they are welcome to leave the caucus and join another. But they remain members of the same party, same government. They use the caucus to advance ideas/alternatives, not to attack the source of ideas/alternatives.

Net: Get rid of parties. Maintain caucuses. Debate alternatives not labels. Simple, right?

— To Be Continued —