Why America Really Has a Three (or Four) Party System

[mjpc88]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_and_New_Lights

In the beginning, America was colonized for the sake of freedom of religion. This freedom would even come to define the definition of patriotism. Low Church Anglicans would be recognized as patriots whereas High Church Anglicans would be recognized as loyalists. Low Church traditions coincided with more Calvinist faith whereas High Church traditions coincided with more Catholic faith. This Calvinism would coincide with Presbyterian and particularist Baptist faith as well. Catholics weren't very prevalent among the American colonies, and non-Calvinist Protestants were moderately common.

Among Calvinists would be the three great awakening periods which would coincide with the Old versus New Light, Side, and School debates. The gist of the matters was how to interpret good works to see if people were saved. Early Americans did not believe in free will since free will was a Catholic belief. The Calvinist tradition was that if God was all-powerful, then people would not have free will. Therefore, freedom of religion opposed believing in free will. It was not about letting people choose what to believe in, but rather letting God's plan be revealed.

The Old side in these debates focused on industrious good works where those who made things happen were instruments of God's revelation which came to a head during the Gilded Age. The New side in these debates focused on people helping other people where those who solved problems were instruments of God's revelation which came to a head during the Social Gospel.

The third party of American politics arrived during these periods during the Melting Pot era when Irish, Polish, and Italian Catholics arrived and didn't agree with either the Old or New side because Catholics don't believe good works prove salvation, but rather good works earn salvation regardless of what type of good work it is. The idea there was that God gave people free will to make with it as they would both in celebrating the mystery of faith as well as whether to be good or not.

(I mention a possible fourth party here as well because we then have non-Calvinist Protestants such as Lutherans, Methodists, generalist Baptists, and Pentecostals who discuss among themselves the piety between good works and free will. Evangelicals kind of fall into this group too, but it really depends on whether the congregation has resolved the debate or not. Those who are unresolved would be fourth partiers while those who are resolved would belong to one of the other three. Atheists would also fall into the fourth party until finding a resolution since it doesn't really matter that they don't believe in God, but rather whether they believe in free will and what they believe a "good work" is.

Jews play a strange role in this as well since their Pharisaic roots coincide with liturgical traditionalism as practiced by the first two groups, but Conservative Jews between the Orthodox Old side and Reformed New side are more aligned to the fourth party here.)

This is the real reason we have Party System shifts in America as well. The first two parties are constantly at odds with each other while trying to simultaneously draw Catholics onto their side as well as distance themselves in saying the other side is more Catholic than themselves, so they're oppressing freedom of religion. It's strange how this happens too since most people generalize America from the specific region they live in, so they don't get a complete grasp of how this battle plays out. Most people also don't get the intergenerational anticipations which happen either from people having ambitions for future generations of their families to succeed within. Heck, there are so many people who treat their own parents or children as political adversaries. If anything, this treatment coincides with the drawing/distancing problem since by pinning other families down, some families rise to the top. (Jews, despite their own qualms with Catholics, are often treated like Catholics by the first two sides in the drawing/distancing problem too.)

The point I want to make here is some might be wondering if the libertarian/authoritarian dichotomy is a distraction to understanding the truth of what's going on behind the scenes. This should clarify what they're wondering about.

[Saracen]

I don't know about you, living in the bubble that the government has crafted for you, but the world could care less if the US was ruled historically by a Republican or a Democrat. America's intervention in foreign affairs in the last 7 decades has been nothing short of imperialist, racist, genocidal, and divisive. There is nothing inherently "good" about American foreign policy, and clearly its local policies are so bad that it is projecting its ills onto the rest of the world.