A Republic, if you can keep it, said the Founding Fathers. Within no time, we did not keep it. I am going to tell you how we can get it back.
The Founding Fathers did not envision a two-party system. Worse: We have to blame ourselves; we did not keep it.
To see where we lost it, we only have to look at the Framers' work, and yet there is a good chance that no one will see how we ended up losing it. It was quite clever, our downfall.
The Founding Fathers put TWO very important things in place at the same time:
1/ Establish a limited Federal framework that would serve a large nation well. With our going into twenty different political directions, the USA would not have lasted very long. It was super smart to limit our political freedom that way.
2/ Empower the People, so no government would deny or disparage the rights of the People.
Fast forward not even all that much into the 19th century and the two-party system is already very clearly visible. What happened? I'll tell you.
The States ended up copying and pasting the Federal voting system in place. No one protested.
Where the Founding Fathers correctly put a limited political system in place, the States doubled down on it, and they could have only done that by intruding into the realm of powers given to the People.
Insult to injury, the local levels of government also followed the restricted political system. We got served a game of divide-and-conquer for three different levels. Fifty percent plus one vote gets represented. The win will go either to 50% to the left or 50% to the right. There are no three 50%s in 100%.
Now you know why the two-party system came to be. The political restrictions were not put in place once, not even twice, but three times by subsequent governmental officials.
Once was fine and actually desired to concentrate power at the Federal level. The other two times took powers away from the People, big time, and no one spoke up, sitting on their hands like dummies being told they got the best of the best in the whole wide world and nothing to worry their pretty little heads about.
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To change the political setup is actually very simple. Yet the steps have to be baby steps. The Red and Blue machines have so much control over us today, including keeping the door closed through which we would be free. So, this is no small potatoes. Baby steps are already giant steps.
When raging against bad cop and joining good cop, we are still in jail. You see that? The both of these cops created the problem from the big picture perspective, so don't walk into the Red room (or into the Blue room) because you got tricked by an issue that is important to you and you now need Red (or Blue) to help out.
The Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights to make sure we would not just be replicating the Federal level setup they had created. They empowered us, if we can keep it.
With the Bill of Rights in our hands, we can demand today that the better voting system is put in place for State, county and city elections.
The weakest spot (read: the most successful approach) will be the local level. Local officials have nothing to protect themselves with from the demands of the Bill of Rights. They can hide behind the State’s skirts, but they cannot hide from the People.
The States should abide, but they were also given powers and freedoms in the US Constitution, so they have loopholes. That makes it a harder approach. But… they were given loopholes only for themselves and not for local governments.
Once the wool is finally off our eyes when we vote proportionally at the local level (which empowers voters four to eight times more than what we have now), then we want to get that better voting system for our State elections as well.
Once we have proportional voting at local and State level, then we will automatically get some Yellow, some Green, and some Orange trickling up at the Federal level, too. That will happen automatically, and we should be glad that it is not going to be twenty different colors. Yet we can only get it if we stand up for the Republic that the Founding Fathers warned us about losing. We have to take action to get it back.
