During this primary presidential election season and the rhetoric it encourages for and against the political parties and their leaders there is the tendency to bemoan the current state of our divisions and to lay claim that it has gotten worse. Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist No.6, published in 1787, gives us the reasons for our partisanship and an historical perspective.
A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt, that if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.
The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society: Of this description are the love of power or the desire of preeminence and dominion – the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed, though equally operative influence¸ within their spheres: Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquility to personal advantage, or personal gratification……Are not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities. Is it not well known that their determinations are often governed by a few individuals, in whom they place confidence, and are of course liable to be tinctured by the passions and views of those individuals?..…Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory?
(The Federalist, No.6, November 14, 1787)
Hamilton had a realistic view of human nature as sinful stemming from the rivalry and violence of our earliest ancestors like Cain murdering his brother Abel. It is a cautionary tale that Hamilton was killed by his political opponent Aaron Burr in a duel. Our present political rhetoric is a continuation of what he described can happen in a highly charged campaign. May the outcome be settled peacefully and accepted by both sides as part of the democratic process.
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