The New York State Legislature, Charter Schools and the “Big Ugly:” A Lesson in Civics (aka, Realpolitics)
Realpolitics: political realism or practical politics especially based on power as well as on ideals.
Why is politics so contentious? Why can’t people get along? Why is everything so partisan?
I can also ask why don’t Mets and Yankee fans get along. Giant and Jets fans?
Politics is contentious, sports are contentious, factions are part of human nature and factions can be passionate.
In Federalist # 10 Madison wrote,
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice
Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Madison acknowledges that factions are at the heart of a democracy,
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its CONTINUE READING: The New York State Legislature, Charter Schools and the “Big Ugly:” A Lesson in Civics (aka, Realpolitics) | Ed In The Apple