All you kiddies, gather ’round, and Mr. Blunt and Cranky will hand the virtual microphone over to President George Washington on this Holiday. Perhaps you can listen to what he said all those years ago, and realize how prophetic he could be:

“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Put another way: poltical parties will, if you don’t watch out, steal the reins of power, and eventually destroy the country.

Which is exactly what happened. Anyone want to look at Dizzy City and tell the Father of our Country that he was wrong?

Mr. B & C