In this era of deep partisan divide the country suffers….but can it move on and return to the days when there was modest harmony that will allow the nation to move forward…..instead of stuck in the 1950s.
Maybe we could take a lesson from our Founder Father, James Madison…..(of course I will give some historic perspective…it is what I do)…..
How do we get beyond the hyper-partisanship? Lessons drawn from our preeminent constitutional founder James Madison might prove helpful.
At first blush, Madison might seem like an unlikely Sherpa to guide us on this quest. In the first place, his most famous argument, found in Federalist Number 10, teaches that “the latent causes of faction” are not situational but are rather “sown in the nature of man.” Since a factious tendency in free governments cannot be overcome, he says, we must accept “the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.”
In the second place, Madison played no small role in establishing the first organized political party in the young republic. He first coined the phrase, the “Republican Party,” and while serving as apparatchik for the Jeffersonian Republicans, he often succumbed to the same partisan fervor we complain about today.
Yet Madison remains a valuable object lesson for these very reasons. First, it is precisely because he knew that factions could not be removed from free government that he actively sought ways to defang them to render them less destructive. Second, it is not Madison’s most partisan activities that teach us how to get beyond polarization, but rather the arc of his whole life and career. Madison’s earlier operations were one reason why the 1790s have been characterized as a “decade-long shouting match.” Yet he retired from the presidency in 1817 in what was widely regarded as an “era of good feelings.”
CIVICS! There is an answer.
For too long the workings of society and the government has become second class or at best an afterthought in our educational policies.
That needs to change….
Teach our children about the workings of this country….do it now.
Lastly, the question is not can we move on but rather will we?
Be Smart!
Learn Stuff!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 
Madison is definitely a good example, but I don’t know chuq. These are different times and there are so many things that people are divided over.🤔
No commonality among us Americans….it will be our downfall…..chuq
So many divisions, not just in America. This country is seriously divided, as are many European nations. (Spain for example.) History may well see this as the decade of ‘The Great Divide’. In the case of the US, I seriously think it is time to split it into two separate countries. In Britain, we already have four of those.
Best wishes, Pete.
An interesting time but I still cannot see it ending well any time soon chuq