I have taken several United States history classes through the course of my formal education. In each and every one, we have discussed our founding fathers, the ideas they considered and how they came together to form guidelines for how generations to come should govern the free world.
One person, in particular, outrightly shared thoughts that have been shared with me by every history educator I have ever met. And it is this: George Washington, our first president, opposed the idea of adhering to political parties. Having heard this idea so much, I began to regard it as a bit of a platitude, not really understanding why he thought them to be so detrimental.
But it has begun to occur to me. As one of my favorite college professors once shared with me, when you place people in categories, you give up trying to understand them. That is true for all aspects of life, but presently particularly relevant in relation to political parties.
As someone who most closely identifies as a Democrat, I have experienced the feeling of being put in the super liberal box. Knowing only that I identify as a Democrat, it is easy to assume that I am a tree-hugging, Birkenstock wearing, supporter of the highest of all taxes and want to take everyone’s guns away. Sure, there are truths in this stereotype, but that does not make it fair.
And I am as guilty of it as anyone. I am often too quick to assume that people that closely identify with the Republican party wholly lack compassion. As a whole, Republicans are often placed in a box of being upper-middle class white people that oppose gender equality and would carry a rifle on their back to the grocery store, given the option.
Neither stereotype is wholly true or fair. Especially in the case of political parties, when we place people in categories, it makes it easy to discredit their opinions and difficult to find compromise. When an elected Democrat refuses to hear the opinion of an elected Republican because of party lines, things get dangerous, and I think President George Washington saw these deep divides coming and wanted to steer clear.
These divides are dangerous. Refusing to compromise because of preconceived notions about what someone’s party identification may imply helps no one. And I am under the impression that government exists to serve its people. When a government stops trying to improve the lives of its people, it becomes irrelevant. We cannot be so committed to being in one camp or another, especially in the case of elected officials, that we become irrelevant.
People are the total of their experiences. No two people have had the same experiences, and no two people interpret an experience the same way. So people tend to understand the world in a variety of different ways. We exist on a spectrum in all ways. When we meet people who are on a different place on the spectrum about an issue, there is something to learn. Even if it doesn’t change our opinion, it can teach us that people exist on different places on the spectrum for a reason.
George Washington was right. Dividing the world into only two categories is dangerous. We, as a united nation, have to be more committed to the well-being of the world than we are to whatever political party we feel loyal to. If that means moving to a different place on the spectrum because you’ve come to understand something differently, that’s good news.
