We humans seem to accept an awful lot without questioning. For example, most of us will offer an earnest, God bless you, or the secular gesundheit, for even the daintiest sneeze, but we remain indifferently silent through all but the most violent coughing spells, to which we respond, Are you OK?
Just about everything related to politics is like this. Whether it's a dismissive, because he's the king, or our more recent custom of bestowing the title the Honorable upon anyone who buys an electoral victory, there are some things we do because, well, just because.
Our nation's Founders knew this well. While they never wanted political parties to acquire the power of governing bodies, they recognized both the inevitability and usefulness of political dichotomy. Thomas Jefferson, for example, believed people naturally divide into opposite political ideologies that in his day described Whigs and Tories. Whigs were the scrappy, self-reliant or God-fearing natural libertarians. Tories were submissive to centralized human authority and were the natural socialists.
Jefferson saw a continual battle between these two ideologies as healthy -- as long as the Tories didn't win.
The Founders did what they could to ensure that election laws, voting procedures and public funds would never favor the elite or crush those who'd dare oppose the entrenchment of authorities. As was written in the Declaration of Independence, mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Over time, however, we've abolished the Founders' safeguards, and major party power has become a legal entitlement. The historical outcome of such power is, predictably, barely sufferable evil.
When the Honorable James Jeffords of Vermont smashed his Republican yoke, I had hoped he'd also smash our complacency. I'd hoped that while he transfixed the cameras and microphones, and while pundits were blathering about history and precedents, he'd boldly declare himself the new Senate minority leader.
Why not? There's only one independent in the Senate, and he's it. Logically, he ought to get the pay raise and title currently held by a fellow who represents an oppressively large minority Republican Party.
Either Bernie Sanders or Virgil Goode, the only independents in the House of Representatives, should become minority leader in that assembly. Unless, of course, Ron Paul of Texas, a life member of the Libertarian Party, were to renounce his Republican affectation and reveal his true nature. In that event, Dr. Paul would be minority leader.
Then again, why are political parties even relevant in working politics? Why should abstractions get an amplified voice in our legislative assemblies?
Alas, the minority/majority facade has been building Democratic and Republican strength since it started about a hundred years ago. In the years since, the two parties have added thousands of laws, rules, funds and practices that have intoxicated them with money and power.
When The Star exposed the stench in the Build Indiana Fund, I'd hoped that citizens would become enraged that members of the minority party in each house get far less BIF money to spend in their districts than do members of the majority party. But there's been no rage. That's just the way things work, right? Winner takes the fat share, but all the good ol' boys get some; just as in lawsuits and boxing matches.
It's taken a long time, and their final victory was so sneaky as to be unnoticed, but the Tories have won. There's no significant difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Both agree that federal authority is pre-eminent, that our individual rights are conditional and that laws don't need justification or limits.
Democrats believe in big government, and they've given it to us. Republicans say they believe in smaller government, but they've made it bigger than the Democrats would have dared. Most of us accept all this as if there's no other way.
Yet I still have hope. People are questioning and even abandoning their parties of habit. Tories have found a range of options including the Green, Natural Law and Reform parties. Whigs have the Constitution and Libertarian parties. So if you're a recent convert to any of these, God bless you. If you're still attached to a barely sufferable evil party, however, I must ask, are you OK?