Factions

The United States constitution and the Federalist papers (one seminal and legally binding and the other a guidance written by a faction within the founding fathers) both warn against factions. Given that the Supreme Court constantly and continually and even continuously focuses on the originality of the language. So when the original document castigates factions, to what does it refer?

Keep in mind that the original document didn't even want the President and the Vice-President to be elected as a ticket or combination. The original thought was that the two men (and, yes it would have always been men in the late 18th and early 19th century) could find commonality if they were forced to by the will of the people. It didn't take long for factions to destroy that idea (which coincidentally was also part of the French Revolution's Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, but that's a whole different story) leading to political parties (factions) from the very early 19th century and moving forward.

So over the centuries of the United States existence, there have been many different factions. There have been clashes between these factions since the Constitution was amended to allow for the election of a faction, that is the election of two men who both represent one faction and whose  election is intended to move the goals of that faction, rather than a compromise of ideas as envisioned by the original document.


What  I am trying to point out here is that all those originalists who want judges to be originalists as well don't really go back to the original document nor to the original ideas of the writers. Political parties end up being destructive of the common weal, an idea that was central to the Revolutionary War and central to the arguments and disagreements that gave all of us the guiding principles that have unfortunately been destroyed in modern times.

That's the real reason we have the Electoral College and once that reason was destroyed by the factions that the document itself decried, the Electoral College should have been either eliminated or amended. Unfortunately what we have now is a Frankenstein's monster that only gives advantage to the factions that the original document despised.

Don't get me wrong. I cannot stand any of the Clintons and as far as I know that includes their grandchildren. But that is one of the by-products of factions. We are bound by the document we have and as long as factions have all the money and power we are helpless to  overcome them.