Factional Fury
In the July 29 Guardian, Michael Goldfarb laments the debacle of the Trump presidency to date: Goldfarb on Ungovernability
However, the recitation of one Trumpian travesty after another is not the core of Goldfarb’s message. It’s just to get your attention and whip up a little outrage. What he’s really getting at is deeper and more troubling. It’s the danger of factionalism, in particular that “the Republicans are no longer a political party but a faction, a much more dangerous thing.”
He goes on to quote James Madison’s definition of “faction” and summarizes Madison’s concerns as expressed in the Federalist Number 10
Madison’s paper itself makes for fascinating if laborious reading—the man had a knack for prolixity in the service of exhausting every possible angle of a subject (research topic: how did the other Constitutional Conventioneers restrain Madison from making the Constitution as long as the Sunday edition of The New York Times?). Nonetheless, if you read the whole thing you get the sense Madison was more concerned about a ruling majority faction rather than the minority faction (in terms of numbers of voters) that the current Republican Party has turned out to be. Nevertheless, Goldfarb’s argument applies, since the Continue reading “Ungovernable? The Curse of a Ruling Faction”