By Frederic J. Fransen InsideSources.com
June 13, 2026 - 9:01 pm
A 1965 “Wizard of Id” comic portion by Johnny Hart and Brant Parker went arsenic follows: The diminutive but tyrannical king is addressing his subjects connected the request for bid and harmony. He past proclaims, “We indispensable each unrecorded by the Golden Rule.”
The radical were confused astatine what helium meant until the Joker clued them in: “He means whoever has the golden makes the rules.”
The converse is besides true: “Whoever makes the rules has the gold.”
I was reminded of this erstwhile I saw that Elbridge Gerry is successful the quality again.
Unfortunately, not for the information that helium was a subordinate of the Second Continental Congress. Nor that helium signed the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation. Not adjacent that helium served arsenic vice president nether James Madison. Instead, he’s successful the quality due to the fact that the Democratic and Republican parties are erstwhile again “gerrymandering.”
The word comes from the signifier of a governmental territory that Gerry, past Massachusetts governor, allowed his Democratic-Republican Party to gully to summation an other legislature seat. It looked similar a salamander, and the word gerrymandering was born.
Gerry recovered the thought “highly disagreeable,” but signed the gerrymander measure anyway.
Gerry was not unsocial among the Founders successful opposing specified governmental gamesmanship. Along with the extortion of number rights, a halfway American rule is the thought of limiting the quality of immoderate 1 “faction” from taking powerfulness and tyrannizing the remainder of the country.
What makes the U.S. Constitution truthful superb and enduring is the galore ways successful which it works to forestall imperishable factions. In Federalist No. 10, Madison noted that, since the “CAUSES of faction cannot beryllium removed,” efforts request to beryllium sought successful the “means of controlling its EFFECTS.”
Yet, governmental parties emerged truthful rapidly that erstwhile George Washington was leaving office, his warnings against parties formed a cardinal portion of his Farewell Address: “I person already intimated to you the information of parties successful the State,” helium warned.
They service to “organize faction, to springiness it an bonzer force; to put, successful the spot of the delegated volition of the federation the volition of a party, often a tiny but artful and enterprising number of the assemblage …”
And erstwhile determination is simply a batch of backmost and forth, arsenic we are experiencing today, “The alternate domination of 1 faction implicit another, sharpened by the tone of revenge … is itself a frightful despotism.”
In 1986, economist James Buchanan won a Nobel Prize successful economics for the improvement of a tract of survey known arsenic Public Choice. Buchanan’s cardinal penetration was that the self-interested behaviour of individuals successful backstage beingness was apt to proceed erstwhile they entered politics. In different words, being elected doesn’t someway crook a quality into an angel.
Or arsenic the Nobel committee wrote successful announcing Buchanan’s prize, “Individuals who behave selfishly (in) markets tin hardly (be expected to) behave wholly altruistically successful governmental life. … Political parties … volition effort to get arsenic galore votes arsenic imaginable successful bid to scope positions of powerfulness oregon person ample fund allocations.” In short, whoever makes the rules gets the gold.
While determination astir apt is nary cure for this, the antidote is cautious rulemaking. As the Nobel Committee noted, Buchanan showed that “the plan of law rules takes connected large importance.” In fact, it’s the key.
While members of Congress person ever been popularly elected, it wasn’t until the transition of the Apportionment Act of 1842 that states with aggregate representatives were required to disagreement themselves into single-member districts, arsenic we person today. With specified districts, the mentation goes, it is hard for immoderate 1 enactment consistently to triumph each legislature spot successful a state. Local concentrations of radical with antithetic interests are often capable to activate Madison’s thought of factions canceling each different out.
Today’s gerrymandering wars are thing different than an effort by some parties to predetermine the result of elections.
Most Americans contiguous are unhappy not lone with the parties but with the strategy itself. They are bushed of letting the king marque the rules. The past clip this happened, astir 250 years agone this month, it led to a revolution.
Frederic J. Fransen is the president of Amerion College successful West Virginia and CEO of Certell Inc. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
English (US)·