Down with Partisan Politics

I find partisan politics disgusting, even repulsive for many reasons. Perhaps the most important is that it rests from A to Z on dishonesty and fraud.

Partisans on each side — in the USA, both registered Democrats and Republicans, both self-avowed progressives and conservatives — act overwhelmingly on the principle that above all they must seek to destroy their partisan opponents, must revile and demonize them on the assumption that when those enemies have been thoroughly exposed and discredited, what remains and what results will be good and glorious for everyone.

Each side is as culpable as the other; neither values truth, freedom, or humanity any more than the other. Each wants to win, to hurt its opponents, to drive them from the field of battle and savor their lamentations.

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Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.