The Full Story. No Party Line. No Spin.

How We Got Here

Washington warned us in 1796. Eisenhower warned us in 1961. Jefferson gave us the remedy in 1776. Seven chapters. The full story of how the American middle class was structurally managed into dependency, and exactly how we take it back.

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On September 17, 1796, George Washington published his Farewell Address. He spent more words warning against political parties than on any other subject. He called them potent engines for cunning men to seize power. He said they would destroy the Republic. He was right. We just did not listen.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796[source]

Washington did not write that as a theoretical warning. He wrote it as a man who had watched the first two political factions form during his own presidency and immediately begin doing exactly what he feared: using party loyalty to override the public interest, using party machinery to reward allies and punish opponents, and using party conflict to distract citizens from what was actually happening to their government.

“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.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796[source]

Read that again. A small but artful and enterprising minority. Washington was not describing a foreign enemy. He was describing the donor class: the people who fund both parties, write the legislation through their lobbyists, and collect the returns through federal contracts, tax loopholes, and regulatory capture. He saw it coming in 1796. He named it. And then we built the exact system he warned us about, and we have been running it for 80 years.

“It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796[source]

The question is not whether Washington was right. He was. The question is: how did we get from the Republic he built to the managed system we are living in today? The answer is a specific sequence of events, each one defensible in isolation, catastrophic in combination. It starts in 1934.

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Sources and References

  1. George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796. Yale Avalon Project
  2. National Housing Act of 1934, Pub. L. 73-479. GovInfo
  3. U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Census of Housing Tables: Homeownership. Census.gov
  4. Stabilization Act of 1942, Pub. L. 77-729.
  5. Internal Revenue Code Section 106, codified by Revenue Act of 1954.
  6. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2023 Employer Health Benefits Survey. KFF.org
  7. Revenue Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-600, Section 401(k).
  8. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Annual Report 2022. PBGC.gov
  9. Vanguard, How America Saves 2024. Vanguard.com
  10. Lewis Powell, "Attack on American Free Enterprise System," August 23, 1971. ReclaimDemocracy.org
  11. First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978).
  12. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
  13. Internal Revenue Code Section 1(h); IRS Publication 550.
  14. Government Accountability Office, Federal Contracting: Fiscal Year 2024 Data. GAO.gov
  15. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961. Archives.gov
  16. Bloomberg, "Strip Club Owner Taps Twitter Earnings Call To Generate Retail Investor Buzz," May 9, 2022. Bloomberg.com
  17. Fortune, "An entertainment company is using Twitter Spaces for its earnings call," April 25, 2022. Fortune.com
  18. Estonian National Electoral Committee, Internet Voting Statistics. Valimised.ee
  19. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. Archives.gov
  20. REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-13, Division B.