Two many Parties

In his book about the life of George Washington, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote: "No man ever left a nobler political testament." Washington warned in his farewell address against the two-party system by stating, "As someone who has always been independent of political parties, I've never understood their value, let alone our attraction to them. Political parties serve always to distract the public and enfeeble the public administration. They agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindle the animosity of one party against another, and are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."