Stanley Fish wrote:
To be political is to believe something, and to believe something is to believe that those who believe something else are wrong, and after all you don’t want people who believe (and would do) the wrong things running your government. So you organize with other like-minded folks and smite the enemy (verbally) hip and thigh. You join a party.

Decius wrote:
I do not see how it can be weak to refuse to join political organizations that are aligned against my interests.

ubernoir wrote:
i missed him arguing that you should join a party

Whether one officially joins a party and carries a card in his wallet isn't the issue. The reality is that most of us who are politically aware do have opinions and take positions, and we do tend to align ourselves with "other like-minded folks," as Dr. Fish put it. Even if we merely sympathize with one party over another and don't actually join organizations, most of us do take sides, and that's both natural and logical.

Where I disagree is the notion that one must choose between the two major parties (in the USA). There are alternatives, although most voters still see the political spectrum of any democracy as being two-sided (left vs. right, capitalism vs. socialism, liberalism vs. conservatism, hawks vs. doves, etc.), regardless of the number of viable political parties.

Decius wrote:
Open minded, well informed voters are the enemies of organized power and subtle, private interests. The party system uses ideology and peer pressure to turn the well informed voters into closed minded ones, ensuring that party managers (and their funding sources) maintain control of the debate.

I completely agree, and the fewer parties, the more influence they have. The solution to that problem is to encourage voters to be open minded and well informed, so that they won't be partisan zombie slaves. I don't consider the mere existence of parties to be the problem, though.

Decius wrote:
If you refuse to sign up for a party, your interests are subject to pursuit.

If, however, you are part of a substantial independent voting block, both parties may have an interest in competing for your attention, and that means you are more likely to get what you want.

Just playing Devil's advocate on this particular point, but wouldn't that encourage more pandering on the part of the candidates and political parties, and more selfishness on the part of the voters?

I know some individuals (they've actually told me this) who don't care about ideology, but only about what candidates will do for them personally, or how much federal money those candidates will steer toward their home states or communities for special projects. They'll vote for Democrats here, Republicans there, based on which candidates are more skillful at using/abusing government for their own interests. Publicly, those candidates attempt to appear to care about what's best for society, but they're all about obtaining power for themselves and their constituents. Some think that it's actually a politician's job to concern himself only with what's best for his constituents, not necessarily for society at large. I don't.

I'm not naive enough to think that I can always determine which politicians are true ideologues and which are corrupt bastards, but as a voter, I do try. I prefer to support candidates who (as far as I can determine) will take the country/state/province/county/city they represent in the right direction (according to my views), regardless of whether I personally reap any specific benefits. I'll benefit in a general sense by having the whole society move in the right direction.

Some issues do affect me personally (gun control, transgender rights), and others don't (abortion, capital punishment). In either case, I'll vote for what I think is right for society, and that won't change from one election to the next. A given candidate (or party platform) either agrees or disagrees with me, and I can't respect a candidate who shops for my vote by giving me what I want (well, claiming to), while having no convictions of his own.

Having said that, I agree that no one political party or candidate can completely satisfy a given voter in any given election, much less over a voter's lifetime. Each time I cast a vote, I do so knowing that the candidate disagrees with me on something, or that there's something in his party's platform that bothers me.

Assuming there aren't any moral or ethical problems regarding the candidates' personal characters, all I can do is support those candidates who agree with me on the majority of issues that I consider important. In that sense, and to that extent, I think one can be an independent voter. But one can't be independent of one's own convictions (without being corrupt), and I think that's the point Dr. Fish makes. In being consistent about their convictions, ideological voters usually do align themselves with parties, intentionally or otherwise. By describing themselves as being "independent," voters usually mean "officially unaffiliated," not "completely without ideology."

Then again, maybe I'm misreading Dr. Fish's article and I'm assuming this is more of an internal process than he intended to suggest. If so, then never mind. ;)

Decius wrote:
Generally, two blocks form because in a majoritarian system with a unitary executive there must be a winner who holds power, and anyone who is not part of that winner is by definition the opposition.

Is the formation of "two blocks" caused by the nature of the system itself, or by our cultural attitudes, independent of the system? I could see the current system in the USA supporting three or four parties, as well as a few independent politicians, which would allow varying degrees of alliances, so that we wouldn't have only the winner and the opposition (well, as the smoke clears after an election, we might have only two sides anyway). Unfortunately, I can't see individual Americans breaking away from the two party mentality in sufficient numbers to support such a scenario. I think it's cultural, rather than an inherent aspect of our system.

RE: Against Independent Voters - Stanley Fish - Think Again - Opinion - New York Times Blog