Let’s strive for national unity

Dear Editor:

 As Loudoun County approaches the finale of the 2025 election cycle, our communities and the nation writ large continue to be immersed in what author Deborah Tannen described as The Argument Culture.  Public discourse has devolved into a war between two opposing factions represented by Democratic and Republican cabals whose hacks serve their personal interests vice the citizens they are supposed to represent. 

George Washington’s 1796 farewell address referred to political parties as dangerous and divisive, believing they would subvert government and empower “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” to seize power and threaten national unity under the guise of serving popular causes.

Washington warned that competing parties would be concerned about securing and maintaining power, ignoring the public interest. Their partisanship, he believed, would eventually fuel division and disunity, making the country vulnerable to foreign manipulation. 

Furthermore, Washington predicted contentious and long-term party rivalries could allow the leader of a “prevailing faction” to take advantage of circumstances to elevate his own position “on the ruins of public liberty.”  Sound familiar?

I am not a Democrat, a Republican, a conservative, or a liberal. I am an American who feels privileged with the choices our country provides if we don’t let the Party elites steal our freedoms. 

I am a retired military combat veteran and government official who served under every president from Kennedy to Obama. I considered those ten men to be “the” president, not “my” president as in a party affiliation. I provided all of them my professional capabilities and loyalty. 

It’s time for Americans to heed Washington’s prescience and eliminate the Republican and Democratic Parties from the institutions of governance at all levels. A third party suggested by Senator Joe Manchin is not the answer. 

Electing independent and unaffiliated Americans to represent Americans and perform the functions of governance is a goal we must achieve. 

Impossible? No. Difficult? Yes. But we have to try. With the help of astute, independent neighbors in Hillsboro, I will write more on these pages how Washington’s vision of national unity can be extracted from the grasp of the “Two-Party System.”

 Chip Beck

Hillsboro