Partisanship is a toxin and a potent mind-altering drug

As Martin Luther King put it,

> "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

We live in a time of bitter struggle. I may scrupulously avoid partisan statements on HN, but elsewhere, damned if I am going to fight with anything less than all I have.

I think this is analogous to how scientists who were under theocratic rule tried hard to incorporate religious notions into their experimental findings. There is a lot of social and community pressure to go all in and devoutly believe that the people are all good and the policies all reasonable and helpful, even when many of the policies are obviously motivated predominantly by powerful interest groups.

The first kind of partisanship is fine, the second is much more akin to a religion or a clique member and is thus not as likely to act in the interest of democracy.

He even set out to undermine his own leader, when he was replaced. (An attribute he shared with the labor party leadership, thus not exceptional, but undoubtedly hypocritical since he claimed not to do so)

It's only marginally hyperbolic to say that Tony Abbott's time in opposition as leader laid the seeds for a decade of political gridlock. (Including the trashing of climate policy and science based decision making)

The Westminster system has always admitted that some governance issues can and should be shared by government and opposition. It takes an opposition willing to share to do it.

This thread's comments against "anti-partisanship" articles show that people also don't want to confront information about them not willing to confront information... etc.

But I do worry about claims of anti-partisanship used as a smokescreen. Some issues are merely partisan differences of opinion. Others are matters of life and death.

I don't object to child incarceration, denial of refugees or revocation of citizenship for minorities because I love the Democratic party, I do it because it's wrong and to cast these issues in the light of mere "partisan politics" is to deny their significance.

Yes, partisanship is a strong cognitive bias. That should be uncontroversial. But that still doesn't mean that at a particular moment in history, a particular political party can't be very VERY clearly in the moral and intellectual wrong.

Given arbitrary points A and B, you can't just state that an unbiased person always adheres to (abs(A-B)/2). That's ridiculous, and makes you susceptible to all kinds of goalpost and Overton-window shifting.

The whole point is that you have to address each issue on its own intellectual merits, and I feel like a lot of the anti-partisan content out there this year (particularly from conservative/libertarian sources like this one) is less focused on the truth of the matter and more on granting a patina of legitimacy to ideas that would otherwise be, well, wrong.

When our DC overlords come together to sing the Hallelujah chorus... that is when you should start to worry.

ex: 1999 bank dereg, Iraq/Afghanistan, TARP, Libya/Syria.