Faction is inevitable; it has been around since the beginning of mankind. People will never think the same no matter what so people tend to find people that are like minded because it makes us feel safe and sheltered but that’s not good at all because the moment we meet someone who thinks differently than we sometimes act of character. James Madison talked about faction in Federalists No.10 and that’s what I wanna talk about.
As defined by Madison, a faction was a number of citizens, whether a majority or minority, who were united and activated “by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Since this is a political blog let’s talk about both the “factions” that run our country today the democrats and republicans. It doesn’t matter which side you identify with but I’m sure we can all agree that it somewhat feels like a faction. He talks about two ways of removing the causes of factions, or political parties. The first was to “destroy the liberty
essential to their existence This remedy would be worse than the disease”. This is basically saying that you would have to abolish freedom completely and that would be worse than faction. The second was to “give everyone the same opinions, passions, and interests”. This is impossible to do. He says that one of the biggest causes for faction is the “unequal distribution or property” so basically the rich and the poor. The rich have always controlled everything throughout time and the poor have been expected to fall in line. No matter how hard we try, it is impossible to remove faction.
So you may ask yourself if it’s impossible to remove faction , what should we do? Madison talks about ways to control faction and the best ways to deal with it. He says faction can best be controlled in a large society under a representative form of government just like what we have today.
So our government is perfect for controlling faction but why does it feel like we are worse than ever right now? My opinion is that we don’t want to listen to each other and nobody on either side is willing to give anything up I understand faction is inevitable but that doesn’t mean we can’t get along and do what’s best for The United States we are all united by the same passions and impulses and that’s exactly what a faction is so if we are gonna have our factions let’s make sure we put the most important one first.
Forward 