Out in the real world, we live and associate freely with people who have different tastes, preferences, and priorities than our own. Not only do we have friends, neighbors and associates who enjoy different hobbies, listen to different music, and make different choices than we do, but great diversity exists among the individuals who make up our nuclear family too.
For the most part, we live this way peacefully, rarely turning our differences into heated debates that end in offense. We may or may not support various decisions made, or actions taken by the people in our lives, but when conflict erupts, we "get over it," rarely severing ties with friends and family because of it.
Then again, all this takes place in the private and voluntary real world.
Enter Politics
There's nothing like the political process to turn people who have no reason to be upset with each other into bitter and hostile enemies.
The most obvious symptom of the conflict created by politics is witnessed in partisan loyalties. We become so loyal to whatever standard demarcations the 2 parties promote, we lose track of our own beliefs. Thus we find ourselves in paradox, supporting politicians and/or policies which violate our own beliefs.
Henry Adams, the great grandson son of President John Adams (famous for signing the Alien and Sedition Acts) observed:
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
Thus, why both Democrats and Republicans encourage the hatred of specific classes (big corporations and welfare recipients for example). The problem of partisan politics doesn't limit itself to arbitrary lines drawn in the sand between the 2 parties either, it dominates intraparty disagreements as well.
The example that stands out most vividly to me is, the traditional vs. neoconservative disagreement over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Leaving aside the obvious financial and utilitarian arguments, nothing turned me against the wars more personally, than the venom spewed by war advocates who libel as an anti-Semite, anyone who believes the endless subsidization of Israel to be bad policy.
It's bad enough I have to listen to the left libel me racist for not supporting institutionalized health care, but to hear the same garbage come from the mouths of people supposedly on my side? Sad. Pathetic. Childish. Lies used to replace honest debate with conflict.
Power
Partisanship of course, is a fraud - a distraction designed to keep people from seeing the truth - that both parties are screwing us over!
There's bipartisan support to screw us over in Washington, no matter what we wish to believe. For example, the Republican Party is no more pro-life, than the Democratic Party is against big corporations.
It's all a lie.
As President Bill Clinton's mentor Professor Carroll Quigley summed it up in "Tragedy and Hope.":
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.
Only when we set aside the partisan noise can we see the truth, that political reality boils down to the struggle for power over each other: 1) those who want to use state power to bully, control and/or live at the expense of others; and 2) the rest of us.
Politics isn't about Democrats vs. Republicans. Politics is about gaming the system and using force against each other to get what we want. It's is a zero-sum game ... you against me.
Take the issue of prayers in school as an example. I think that everyone, except a maniacal tyrant, would agree that a parent has the right to decide whether his child will recite a morning prayer in school. Similarly, a parent has a right to decide that his child will not recite a morning prayer. Conflict arises because schools are government owned. That means it is a political decision whether prayers will be permitted or not. A win for one parent means a loss for another parent.
The conflict grows more intense too, as the policies of the "winners" are put upon the "losers." Some Americans for example, are forced to pay exploitive taxes to grant income and/or special privileges to others, or to bailout billion dollar manufacturing companies and banks ...
Thanks to the recently passed health care bill, many will be threatened with punishment by fine or imprisonmnet if they don't buy a product from another individual. Do you possess a certain plant some people don't like? Then a SWAT team will raid your home, shoot your pets, and terrorize your children. Don't want to sell your home? Then the government will take it via eminent domain, to give to someone else who's more politically connected. The list is endless.
Whatever it is you want the government to do, it will come at the expensive of another. Policies can neither pay for themselves nor enforce its own commands. Policy requires theft and the threat of, or use of violent force. There are no exceptions to this rule. And don't kid yourself either, the people who make up the government are no angels. After all, why do you think there's a new political scandal everyday? Or why the internet is littered with videos of cops committing heinous acts of violence?
Because that's exactly what politics is ... Disgraceful, backbiting politicians pander to voters so they can "justify" the plunder of some for the benefit of others. Gun-totting cops are in the business of denying peoples rights over petty things like possessing a plant and/or not buying insurance. Then they'll come to confiscate your home to boot, when you can't cough up the spoils they expected.
Uncivilized Society
There is nothing civil about this game. It is savage, cruel and harsh ... It is evil.
Politics turns friends into enemies.
Looters always have a million reasons why other peoples money should be spent. After all, it will make some very happy. But those who are forced to pay for something that has little, or perhaps a negative benefit to them, will inevitably become angry.
The same goes for legislating morality too. It makes some people feel good to absolve themselves of dealing with immorality directly, but it certainly angers those who's liberties are violated and lives often get broken.
Then on top of it all ... Instead of arguing over the things that matter - the use of violent force and plunder - we argue over the "merits" of the proposed legislation instead. Advocates proclaim how much better the world will be, while their opponents argue what a waste the policy will be. Yet the legislation itself need not be good or bad to settle the only thing that matters ...
The fact that it must be funded by forcibly taking money from innocent people, and/or requires denying someone's inalienable rights via brute force. But as long as it's not our family or friends, who cares, right? This is the cold, hard truth we wish to ignore, and why we prefer to focus on merits and demerits of policy instead.
Deep down inside however, where our shadow lurks, we do know the truth. But instead of facing it, we project our shadows onto our opponents, and demonize them instead - racist! anti-Semite! miscreant! fascist pig!
Friends become enemies.
Civilized Society
Voluntary association and activity is the only way we can live in relative peace. People can advocate their pet projects by soliciting voluntary donations and constructive persuasion, while opponents of those projects can simply choose not to fund them or participate. Yet both parties can remain living on peaceful terms.
This is why focusing on local government is superior to focusing federal government. Through local government, people can pursue goals and make decisions based on their individual needs and community (where it matters most), instead of trying to mandate directives on people in far away lands (states, cities, and towns you'll never once visit). This reduces conflict too, because we don't have to raise our fists against each other, fighting to achieve our goals.
Local communities also know their needs better than the 535 in Washington, DC. Local communities can better educate their children, provide health care, enforce law, manage their budgets, and pave roads better than the nameless bureaucrats who are thousands of miles away can.
Even fighting terrorism is better left to local communities. Have you noticed that all of the attacks on our homeland since 9/11 were not thwarted by the Patriot Act or Homeland Security, but instead by individual citizens?
In Summary
The truth (or the adult understanding), is that politics is a zero-sum game that pits you against me. By ignoring this truth, focusing on the merits and demerits of a given policy instead, we resort to partisan politics and name-calling, thus intensifying conflict instead of seeking cooperative solutions. Then the "winners" of the conflict of course, fund their ideas through plunder, enforced at the point of a gun.
I still believe the most viable way to live peacefully and cooperatively, starts with the following words:
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. -- Matthew 7:12
You may disagree ... Yet if we focus on our local communities instead of national mandate, we at least have the opportunity to live in relative peace, because we no longer force our own ideas on one another. Besides, how can you call someone a friend, when you support using institutional violence and plunder against them?
[...] The American political process has become its own worst enemy. It divides people. It pits us one against one another. Far from being the “solution” to anything, politics creates conflict. [...]