The Case for Disunity (Bravo For Partisanship)

Washington Post ^ | 4 February 2008 | Susan Dunn

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United we stand; divided we fall," Patrick Henry wrote in 1785. Other Founders also extolled unity. "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all," quipped Thomas Jefferson. "There is nothing which I dread so much," John Adams remarked, "as a division of the republic into two great parties."

But they had it wrong: They were too close to their own creation to grasp its genius. The strength of the young republic and the key to its success lay not in its fictional unity but in its ability to tolerate opposition and sustain political division.

Barack Obama's ardent, heartfelt promise to bring Americans together and turn the nation's capital into a place of bipartisan harmony not only buys into the seductive myth of national unity but misconstrues the very essence of democracy -- which is nonviolent political conflict.

...What Obama and others, captivated by the notion of unity, could reasonably promise is not national unity but simply unity within the Democratic Party or within the Republican Party. For Republicans and Democrats do not and should not agree. Different, competing visions of the public good are the lifeblood of a dynamic and open democracy. They strengthen our democracy, engage citizens in meaningful political debate and keep us awake.

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Attempts to squelch differences between competing points of view are both unnecessary and dangerous.

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Attempts to squelch differences between competing points of view are both unnecessary and dangerous.

Amen to that. In the words of another Founding Father....

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Thomas Paine