A call to break our nation’s dual-party system

Home In All Lands: In defense of small theater: save the Eveningstar Cinema

My columns tend to require the reader to dig through layers of fluff, verbosity and nonsense (such as this) to get to the core idea. This week’s column, however, is no rant. It is a plea for help. Not for me but for a downtown institution fighting for survival. I want to tell you about its history, why it has to be saved, and how you can help its campaign to stay in business.
The Eveningstar Cinema, located at the back of the Tontine Mall on Maine Street, has been at the heart of Brunswick since it opened on Friday, November 2, 1979. The first film it screened was “Heaven Can Wait,” a comedy about a football player who dies and then is sent back down from heaven to live in the body of a millionaire. The theater been a part of Brunswick life for more than three decades and its name refers to the earliest years of this town’s existence.
When fisherman settled what they called Pejepscot in the 17th century, they received considerable assistance from the Native Americans who inhabited this area, such that the names of the local chief and his wife can be found in early town records. The wife’s name—according to a history of the theatre written by Greg Melick, its builder and designer—translates to mean “Eveningstar.” The cinema is much more than a recent arrival in this town; indeed, its name speaks to Brunswick’s long history.

Home In All Lands: Speak about it: the importance of multilingualism in America

If you took a trip back to 1920s-era Brunswick, things probably wouldn’t look all that different. Sure, you’d have to contend with the loud honk of the tin lizzies driving around—not to mention the clanging of streetcars motoring up and down Maine Street—but at the most superficial level, the Brunswick before you is fairly similar to the town you know today.
Down on the street, however, things would not be so familiar: if you decided to walk down to Cabot Mill, not only would you find the place working optimally, you would also have strolled right into the heart of Brunswick’s now-forgotten French quarter.
Up until the middle of the 20th century, speaking French in Brunswick was a part of everyday life for a large segment of the population. Yet, as with so many of the linguistic and ethnic enclaves that defined the American social landscape a century ago, you would be hard-pressed to find modern remnants of the Franco-American community beyond family names like Michaud, Levesque or St-Pierre.

Home In All Lands

A call to break our nation’s dual-party system

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Jean-Paul Honegger

Columnist

September 26, 2013

Earlier this year, Rand Paul—the junior senator from Kentucky,—did something that has seldom happened in the Senate in recent memory: he filibustered. For 13 hours. That is, he actually filibustered, rather than just stopping the Senate through procedural trickery. I would certainly commend him for his stamina and verbosity were it not for the fact that his long speech was a disheartening reminder of the increased polarization of the American political scene.

Paul’s speech highlighted what I feel to be one of the great idiosyncrasies of the American political scene—that this multi-faceted nation has been dominated by a dual party system. The longevity of this highly flawed system has done more damage to the cause of democracy than anything else: more than Super PACs, lobbyists or special interest money. It all but forces many Americans to vote for parties that do not necessarily best represent their concerns. This is no doubt an important factor in the disillusionment with government and politics in America today.

A greater spread of opinions is needed on the political scene to account for the 30 percent of voters who don’t identify with either of the two big political parties. It is time to rethink the system and to strongly consider an alternative that has been ignored for too long: multi-party democracy.

During the primary season, the two dominant parties have to espouse radical views to ensure that they can win votes from the fringe. Both have members whose views are diametrically opposed. Consider the divergence in opinions between Dennis Kucinich and President Obama in the Democratic party.

Once the primaries are over, a candidate has to switch back to a more moderate viewpoint in order to make their views more palatable to the general public. In a multi-party democracy, there are specific political groups that provide for more radical views, like the British National Party or the Cape Party in South Africa. This does not prevent larger parties from existing, who can and do represent the larger segments of the voting population.

However, these larger political groups don’t overwhelm the system and allow for other views to be heard. In the United States, this alternative to the “big two” comes only from independent politicians, a promising idea in principle that is nullified when you realize that there are no independents in the House and only two in the Senate, both of whom—including Maine’s own Angus King—caucus with the Democrats.

There aren’t any “third party” candidates in Congress because, as Barry C. Burden of the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains: “citizens vote strategically to avoid ‘wasting’ their votes on hopeless candidates and spoiling the election.”

It is tragic that the likes of Angus King are the exception, rather than the rule, in this nation. One of the main problems in the U.S. is that alternative parties are either too issue-specific, like the Prohibitionist Party or too extreme, like the American Nazi Party.

It’s no small wonder that people would feel that their votes are wasted, even on “larger” third parties like the Libertarians or Greens. If the “big two” were relieved of their extremist burdens, they would be able to use their well-established positions to represent the majority of voters, while still allowing the more radical elements to have their own distinct, voice in government.
There are those who argue that there is an inherent instability in an actual multi-party democracy, pointing to examples like Iraq or Italy where governments (that is to say, cabinets) are often held together by figurative scotch tape. They argue, correctly, that governments in those countries are forced to concede to the whims of small extremist groups.

Italy, since it became a republic in 1946, has had more governments than the years passed. An interesting fact, certainly, that has no relationship to the American reality.

Indeed, in Italy parliamentarians can also be members of the government, whereas in the United States, due to the separation of powers, a member of Congress cannot also be a member of the President’s cabinet, which prevents the executive branch from being strangled by political machinations. And instead of gridlock in the House, the presence of at least a third party would encourage the two main parties to make real compromises, either with each other or the new party, instead of the preposterous deals and arrangements that contribute to bloated and ineffective legislation.

Others argue that the system works and that it doesn’t need to be changed at all, that “this is the way it’s always been,” as if that somehow justifies inaction. A political system that fails in its primary purpose shouldn’t continue to exist.

In many governments, multi-partyism helps raise the level of political discourse and strengthens the cause of democracy, as is the case in Germany, Australia and New Zealand, to name a few.
Certainly, the long-standing tradition of duopoly will be hard to break in America but it must be done for the good of the country, its legislature and, most importantly, its people.

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