The Founders and the Problem of Parties

This morning someone asked me whether America’s Founders were truly opposed to political parties. It is a familiar question, and for good reason: the early republic was full of warnings about “factions,” the term they used before “party” became standard political vocabulary.

George Washington’s Farewell Address is the most famous example. As he prepared to leave office, he cautioned that factions would inflame jealousies, divide the nation into rival camps, and invite foreign powers to manipulate American politics. Washington’s concern was civic and national: parties, he believed, threatened the fragile unity of the new republic.

Thomas Jefferson is often quoted—and often misquoted—on the subject. A popular paraphrase has him saying, “If there are political parties in heaven, I’d rather not go there.” Jefferson did not write that exact line, but he did write something close. In a 1789 letter to Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party… If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Jefferson’s point was philosophical and personal. He believed that republican virtue required independent judgment, and that parties demanded a kind of moral surrender. To join a party was, in his view, to hand over one’s conscience.

James Madison, ever the architect, approached the problem differently. He agreed that factions were dangerous—especially when a majority could use them to oppress a minority. But unlike Washington or Jefferson, Madison believed that given human nature factions were inevitable and that they could not be eliminated without unjustly limiting freedom. As he wrote in the Federalist Papers, the task therefore was not to eliminate factions but to “break and control the violence” they could unleash. His answer was structural: a large republic, separation of powers, and institutional designs that force competing interests to check one another.

So, while Jefferson, Washington, and Madison all distrusted parties, they distrusted them for different reasons: Jefferson feared the corruption of personal judgment, Washington feared the loss of national unity, and Madison feared the tyranny of an unchecked majority. And yet, despite their warnings, parties emerged almost immediately.  Jefferson, Washington, and Madison warned us—and we still walked right into the trap.

Rethinking Leadership: When Wisdom Governs

Picture this: It’s ancient Athens. Democracy is… let’s call it “chaotic but enthusiastic.” Politicians are making big promises, citizens are yelling in the agora, and someone named Thrasymachus is definitely shouting about power again.

Enter Plato, who looks around and says, essentially, “You know what would fix this? A ruler who doesn’t even want to rule.”

And thus, the philosopher king is born.

The Philosopher King: The Overachiever of Overachievers

A philosopher king is not your average ruler. No, this is someone who wakes up excited about metaphysics, eats a light breakfast of virtue, and then spends the afternoon contemplating the nature of justice while everyone else is trying to figure out who stole their sandals. 

Introduced in The Republic, the philosopher king represents Plato’s vision of the ideal ruler—someone who unites deep wisdom with political authority. In a world where leaders often chase power, wealth, or popularity, Plato imagined something radically different: a leader motivated solely by truth and the common good.

But is this ideal inspiring, impossible, or a blueprint for authoritarianism? Let’s explore what Plato had in mind, why the idea still fascinates us, and where its critics push back.

Key Traits (According to Plato, Who Had High Standards)

• Loves wisdom: Not “likes reading.” Loves wisdom. The kind of person who would choose a good book over a good throne. Philosopher kings are driven by a passion for truth—not wealth, status, or personal gain. Their curiosity is lifelong, and their decisions are grounded in reason.

• Knows “the Good”:  Not just good, but The Good™. The cosmic, universal, capital‑G Good. It’s like having the Wi‑Fi password to the universe. Plato argued that understanding “the Good” is essential for just leadership. This isn’t just moral goodness—it’s a deep grasp of reality, virtue, and what truly benefits society.

• Lives simply: No gold-plated chariots. No palace with a lazy river. Just a humble home, a clean conscience, and maybe a very well-organized bookshelf. These leaders live simply, act selflessly, and maintain high moral character. Their personal lives reflect the values they expect from the state.

• Trained like an intellectual Navy SEAL: Plato's ideal leaders excel intellectually. Their education spans decades - decades of math, logic, philosophy, and perhaps military drills. Imagine a Rhodes Scholar who can also lead a cavalry charge. 

What Does This Paragon Actually Do All Day?

• Ensures Justice: They structure society so everyone does what they’re best at. Bakers bake. Soldiers soldier. Philosophers… well, philosophize. Their central mission is to structure society according to reason and fairness. Justice, for Plato, means each part of society functioning harmoniously.

• Guides the Youth: Part teacher, part guardian, part “please stop poking the fire with that stick.”  Philosopher kings guide citizens—especially the young

• Makes Rational Decisions: No impulsive decrees. No “I had a dream last night and now we’re banning olives.”  Their leadership is grounded in calm, thoughtful deliberation rather than impulse or passion.

How to Become a Philosopher King (Spoiler: You Won’t)

Plato’s process makes Harvard admissions look like a raffle.

• Selected Early: Not because their parents donated a wing to the Academy, but because they show promise and don’t bite other children. Potential rulers are identified early in life based on talent and character—not family background.

• Educated for decades:  Rigorous education filters out anyone lacking discipline, intellect, or virtue. Only the most capable advance.

• Practical Experience: If they survive the math, the metaphysics, and the existential dread, they're still only halfway there. Plato thought that before ruling, the ideal leader needed practical experience in political roles that proved their good judgment and resilience. Experience in civic duties. Probably some crisis management experience. Maybe eve military service 

• Final promotion: Only after proving they are wise, virtuous, and not secretly power-hungry do they get the keys to the kingdom.

Why People Like the Idea

No corruption. No petty politics. No leaders who say “I did my own research” after reading half a scroll.  A philosopher king would, in theory, rule with fairness, clarity, and a deep sense of responsibility. The idea of the philosopher king appeals to anyone frustrated with short-term politics or leaders driven by ego.

Why People Side-Eye the Idea

It is a little elitist—and it’s only one bad day away from “philosopher tyrant.” Let’s be honest: “power” and “trust me, I’m virtuous” is a combination that has historically gone sideways.

Why Does the Idea Still Stick Around?

Because it taps into a universal fantasy: What if the smartest, kindest, most reasonable person was in charge? Not the loudest. Not the richest. Not the one with the best slogans. Just the wisest.

It’s a lovely dream — even if, like most lovely dreams, it dissolves the moment you try to implement it in a room full of actual humans.

Planning Ahead: The Anatomy of Fascism

The 20th century left us a warning written in ash and bone: when fascism rises, entire societies can be dragged into catastrophe. World War II did not simply erupt—it was engineered by movements that fed on rage, myth, and the seductive promise of national rebirth. In the end seventy‑five to eighty million lives had were claimed. With destruction on that scale, understanding fascism becomes more than a historical exercise

Fascism today is often reduced to a casual insult, a rhetorical weapon tossed at any politician or policy we dislike. That flattening strips the term of its historical weight.  [What We Lose When “Fascism” Becomes an All‑Purpose Insult]  Even in more serious discussions, however, we tend to imagine fascism as a tidy ideology—a fixed set of doctrines that can be summarized like a party platform. But as historian Robert O. Paxton reminds us in his book The Anatomy of Fascism, “fascist movements varied so conspicuously from one national setting to another… that some even doubt that the term fascism has any meaning other than as a smear word."

The truth is that fascism was never primarily about doctrine. It was about behavior. Fascist movements revealed themselves through what they did: their mobilization of crowds, their glorification of violence, their manipulation of myth and emotion, their relentless pursuit of power. Their ideas were often contradictory or deliberately vague because coherence mattered far less than momentum. Fascists were not theorists; they were activists, agitators, and opportunists who believed that action itself—dramatic, theatrical, often brutal—was the engine of political transformation.

A past that cost tens of millions of lives is not something we can afford to misunderstand. The question is not whether history repeats itself exactly, but whether we are paying attention when its shadows begin to lengthen again. 

This is why my lecture series The Anatomy of Fascism approaches the subject not as a static belief system but as a dynamic political movement. To understand fascism, we must watch how it behaves, how it grows, how it exploits crisis, and how it transforms ordinary citizens into participants in extraordinary violence. Only by studying its patterns of action can we recognize how similar forces might re-emerge in different times and places, wearing new symbols but pursuing familiar ends.

Orwell's War on Sloppy Language

When George Orwell sat down in 1946 to write Politics and the English Language, he wasn’t just irritated by bad prose. He felt something larger slipping away—clarity, honesty, even the ability to think straight. To him, the decline of language wasn’t a cosmetic problem; it was a moral one. Foolish thoughts produced sloppy language, and sloppy language made it easier to think even more foolish thoughts. Left unchecked, the cycle would spin on forever.

Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950)
who wrote under the pen name of
George Orwell

Orwell believed that political actors understood this perfectly well. Sloppy, inflated, evasive language wasn’t an accident—it was a tool. It allowed governments to hide brutality behind soft cushions of words, to make the indefensible sound reasonable, and to lull citizens into accepting what they might otherwise resist. When language becomes vague, he warned, truth becomes optional.

The Fog That Thinks for You

Orwell describes the modern writer as someone moving through a thick fog of ready‑made phrases. The fog is comforting; it saves effort. Why think when a cliché can do the thinking for you? Why confront a brutal truth when a soft euphemism can cushion it? Orwell sees how this fog works on the mind; once you stop choosing your own words, you stop choosing your own thoughts.

Orwell had a gift for metaphor, and he used it to expose the tricks of bad writing. He compared insincere writers to cuttlefish, creatures that release clouds of ink whenever they feel threatened. Politicians and bureaucrats, he argued, do the same thing—only their ink takes the form of long words, stale metaphors, and phrases so overused they no longer mean anything.

He noticed how often writers and politicians reached for ready‑made phrases, “long strips of words." These bits of language, he said, anesthetize the mind. They allow a writer or speaker to sound authoritative without anyone actually thinking.

Worst of all for Orwell was political euphemism—the art of making “lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” Bombing civilians became pacification. Forced displacement became transfer of populations. The words were clean; the actions were not.

And then there were the meaningless words—terms like democratic or fascist that had been stretched so thin they could mean anything or nothing. Such words were perfect for praise or condemnation because they required no evidence, only emotion.

Echoes in His Fiction

Orwell's concerns weren't confined to his essays. They became the backbone of his fiction. In 1984, Newspeak is the logical endpoint of linguistic decay: a language engineered to shrink the range of human thought. If there is no word for freedom, how can one imagine it?

In Animal Farm, language becomes a weapon of control. Slogans are repeated until they replace memory. Commandments are quietly rewritten. And the chilling line “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” shows how easily language can be twisted to make injustice sound natural.

A Way Back

Despite his bleak diagnosis, Orwell wasn't a fatalist. He believed that the decline of language was reversible. He insisted that writers and speechmakers could resist the drift into the fog by choosing clarity over ornament, precision over vagueness, honesty over convenience. His six rules for writing—avoid clichés, use short words, cut unnecessary language, prefer the active voice, avoid jargon, and break any rule before saying something absurd—were meant as an act of resistance and rebellion.

Fighting for a clean sentence, Orwell is not polishing prose for beauty’s sake. He is trying to keep language alive because once language collapses, truth is next. His essay is a reminder that clarity is not just a stylistic choice. It is a moral stance. It is a refusal to let someone else think on your behalf. It is the belief that words, used honestly, can still cut through the fog.

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More on Orwell

Who Really Writes History? The Winners, the Losers… or the Liars?

The Future Orwell Feared Is the One We Built

What’s Next? Erasing History

Earlier this month, I explored the state of healthcare in the United States and how numbers alone cannot capture the deeper moral and civic questions beneath the surface. In April, I will turn to another topic where facts, memory, and meaning collide: the struggle over history itself.

Across the political spectrum, people accuse one another of rewriting or erasing the past. Confederate monuments come down. Military bases are renamed—sometimes more than once. Textbooks and school curricula are revised. Museums rethink their exhibits. Even state flags are redesigned. Each of these actions is framed by some as an assault on heritage and by others as an act of moral repair.

The central question of my upcoming lecture is simple but demanding: When do these actions erase history, and when do they represent an attempt to care for the nation’s soul?

The Soul of a Nation

The idea of a national soul is ancient. Around 375 BCE, Plato explored the soul of a city-state in The Republic, describing how a community’s character, justice, and shared ideals shape its political life. That idea has echoed across centuries of political thought: nations, like individuals, have an inner life.

A national soul can be understood as:

• The deep, animating collective spirit of a people
• The core identity that binds a nation together
• A shared set of ideals, values, and principles
• A collection of enduring, aspirational commitments
• The moral conscience that guides political, social, and economic life
• A living inheritance that grows out of a shared remembered past

A nation’s history—its triumphs and its traumas—forms the narrative through which people understand who they are, how they relate to one another, and what is good and important. That narrative is never static. It is shaped, revised, and sometimes contested as new generations reinterpret the past.

When Does Change Become Erasure?

The tension arises because caring for the national soul requires two things that can feel contradictory:

1. Honoring the past—even when it is painful, complicated, or uncomfortable.
2. Refusing to enshrine falsehoods—especially when they distort who we have been or who we aspire to be.

Removing a monument, renaming a base, or revising a textbook can be an act of erasure if it attempts to hide or sanitize history. But it can also be an act of moral clarity if it helps a nation confront the truth more honestly.

The difference lies in intention and outcome:

• Does the action obscure the past, or does it illuminate it?
• Does it narrow our understanding, or deepen it?
• Does it silence part of the story, or make room for voices long ignored?

A healthy national soul requires the courage to face both the good and the bad without flinching. It requires the discipline to distinguish fact from fiction, memory from myth, and heritage from nostalgia.

Caring for the National Soul

Caring for the national soul is not a passive act. It demands ongoing engagement with history—its achievements, its failures, and its unresolved tensions. It asks us to hold complexity rather than retreat into simplicity. It challenges us to build a shared narrative that is honest enough to heal and hopeful enough to inspire.

The debate over “erasing history” is really a debate about who we are and who we want to become. It is a struggle over memory, identity, and the moral responsibilities of citizenship.

As April approaches, I am looking forward to exploring this question: not to settle the debate, but to help us see it more clearly.

Erasing History—or Caring for our National Soul?

Tuesday, 4/21; 9:30 – 11:30 AM Pacific Time

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

California State University, East Bay

Register here (Must be a member to register)

 

More on Erasing History

Erasing History in Plain Sight

Who Really Writes History? The Winners, the Losers… or the Liars?

March Is Women’s History Month

March is Women’s History Month – And I Have Some Reading Suggestions

March invites us to pause, look back, and honor the women whose courage, intellect, and persistence shaped the nation we live in. It’s a month for rediscovering stories that were too often pushed to the margins—and for celebrating the writers who bring those stories back into the light.

Three Books by Cokie Roberts Worth Your Time

If you’re looking for meaningful, accessible, and deeply human history to read this month, you can’t go wrong with Cokie Roberts. Her trilogy on American women is a gift: warm, meticulously researched, and filled with the kinds of stories that make you wonder why these names weren’t in your school textbooks.

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

Roberts opens the American Revolution from a new angle—through the women who sustained households, managed businesses, ran farms, and shaped political thinking while the men drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These are stories of grit, sacrifice, and strategic brilliance. They remind us that independence was not only fought on battlefields but also in kitchens, parlors, and makeshift war rooms across the colonies.

Ladies of Liberty

Roberts continues the story into the early republic, spotlighting the women who helped steer a fragile new nation. Roberts shows how these women balanced public influence with private responsibility, often acting as political advisors, social diplomats, and cultural leaders in an era that pretended they had no role at all.

Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848–1868

By the time Roberts reaches the Civil War, the women of Washington, D.C. are no longer operating behind the scenes—they are shaping the political and social landscape in unmistakable ways. This book is a riveting portrait of independence, service, and political empowerment during one of the most turbulent periods in American history.

A New Voice for Women’s History: Norah O’Donnell

I just downloaded Norah O’Donnell’s new book, and it promises to be a powerful addition to the genre.

We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America

O’Donnell brings together portraits of American women—from 1776 to the present—whose courage and persistence helped bend the arc of the nation toward a more perfect union. It’s a sweeping, modern look at the unsung heroes who fought for freedom, expanded rights, and insisted that America live up to its ideals.

Why These Books Matter

Women’s History Month isn’t just about celebration—it’s about correction. It’s about restoring the missing chapters, acknowledging the invisible labor, and recognizing that the American story has always been a collaboration, even when only half the collaborators were credited. These books remind us that history is richer, more complex, and far more inspiring when we widen the lens.

And one more thing—because the science is too good not to mention: people who read live longer. Truly. Studies show that regular reading is linked to longer life expectancy, reduced stress, sharper cognition, and deeper empathy.

So, this March, pick up a book about the women who shaped America. You’ll honor their lives—and maybe even extend your own.

 

 

Erasing History in Plain Sight

 As I prepare for my upcoming lecture Erasing History—or Caring for Our National Soul? I keep circling back to a simple but unsettling truth: forgetting history is sometimes accidental – but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, history is curated and aestheticized. Sometimes history is written by the losing side of battles, or by the nostalgic, or by the people who desperately need the past to be something more flattering than it was. And sometimes, history is sold to us with a mint julep and a guided tour.

Suzannah Herbert’s new documentary film Natchez, which turns its lens on plantation tourism in Mississippi, captures this dynamic vividly.  The film is not just about a place; it’s about a performance — a carefully staged version of the past that comforts visitors while burying the truth beneath layers of charm and choreography.

Orwell’s Warning: Memory as a Battleground

George Orwell famously wrote that “who controls the past controls the future.” He understood that the past is contested terrain. In my earlier post on Orwell and erasing history, I explored how defeated movements — such as post‑WWI German nationalists and the architects of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy — often craft seductive counter‑historical narratives. These stories don’t triumph because they’re accurate. They triumph because they’re emotionally satisfying. Natchez shows this process unfolding in plantation tours that become a kind of soft‑focus propaganda where slavery is minimized or euphemized, violence is reframed as hardship, enslaved people are reduced to footnotes, and architectural beauty becomes a distraction from human brutality. This is not history. It is mythmaking. And it is exactly the kind of mythmaking Orwell warned us about.

The Plantation as a Stage Set

One of the most striking insights in Natchez is how plantations function as theatrical spaces. The tours are scripted. The costumes are curated. The narratives are polished until they gleam. Visitors are invited to admire the chandeliers, the gardens, the gowns — everything except the system of racial terror that made those luxuries possible. The film exposes how this “heritage tourism” industry relies on a kind of emotional laundering. The past is cleaned up, softened, and made palatable. The result is a version of history that feels safe, even charming, but is fundamentally dishonest.

This is erasure by substitution. Not deleting the past but replacing it with something prettier.

Losers Writing History: The Lost Cause Lives On

What makes Natchez so powerful is that it reveals how the Confederacy — a defeated cause — still shapes American memory. The plantation fantasy is not a victor’s narrative. It is a loser’s narrative that has been elevated, repeated, and monetized until it feels authoritative.

The defeated can rewrite history just as effectively as the victorious, especially when their version of the past meets a psychological need. The plantation myth serves to ease guilt, evoke nostalgia, deflect responsibility, and craft a sellable narrative.

In this sense, Natchez is a case study in how societies choose comforting lies over difficult truths.

The Soft Erasure: How Forgetting Really Works

Sometimes erasing history is dramatic with book burning and censorship. Sometimes erasing history is much less than dramatic. It can be something quieter: selective omission; euphemism; aesthetic distraction; or narrative substitution. Natchez captures this soft erasure with painful clarity. The film shows how plantation tours don’t deny slavery; they simply bury it under magnolia blossoms and romanticized storytelling. This is how forgetting becomes a cultural habit.

Why This Matters Now

We are living through a moment when the past is being contested with new intensity. School curricula, public monuments, museum exhibits, and tourist attractions have become battlegrounds. The question is no longer what happened but whose version of what happened will define our collective memory.

Natchez forces us to confront the stakes of this struggle. It asks whether we are willing to face the truth — or whether we prefer the comfort of curated forgetting.

Reclaiming the Past Without Rewriting It

If we want a healthier relationship with history, we must resist both forms of distortion: the victor’s triumphalist rewriting and the loser’s sentimental rewriting. We must insist on a memory that is honest, unsparing, and humane. That means telling the full story of plantations — not as romantic estates, but as forced‑labor camps. It means centering the lives of the enslaved, not the fantasies of the nostalgic. It means recognizing that the struggle over history is not about the past at all. It is about the future we are willing to imagine.

Natchez reminds us that the past is not gone. And unless we challenge the myths, it will continue to shape us in ways we do not see.