Tribal Loyalties, Lost Liberties: Unheeded Warnings from the Founders
“I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.”
John Adams didn’t pull any punches. Though his presidency was contentious, this 1763 quote underscores his deep disdain for blind partisanship – a concern shared by many of the Founding Fathers and the thinkers who influenced them – about the perils of political factions and what they called a “party spirit.”
They recognized that partisan loyalty would blind people to truth, principle, and liberty itself. Yet here we stand, nearly two-and-a-half centuries later, grappling with a political culture as bitterly divided – and as dominated by factions – as ever. We have clearly ignored their grave warnings for generations.
Intellectual Roots: Trenchard, Gordon, and Sallust
The Founders did not invent these concerns on their own. Rather, they drew extensively on earlier thinkers like Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard.
Their series of essays known as Cato’s Letters, published in the early 1720s, circulated widely in colonial America. Many historians have noted that these essays were some of the most influential pre-Revolutionary writings in the colonies – cited and quoted in newspapers from Boston to Savannah.
Additionally, in his Works of Sallust, Gordon relied on the famed Roman historian to illustrate how the ancient Roman Republic crumbled, in large part, under the weight of corruption, power struggles, and unbridled factionalism.
When personal loyalties overshadow principles, truth becomes secondary to party success. Leaders can justify any measure – no matter how harmful – in the name of “serving the public.”
Gordon offered one of the most scathing critiques of parties and factions, writing:
“It is with Measures as with Men; they are praised, or condemned, not because they are Right or Wrong, Beneficial or Hurtful, but because they come from this Party, or the other.”
This mindset fosters an environment where truth becomes secondary to party loyalty. Worse, it enables the powerful to justify any action, no matter how contradictory or harmful. As Gordon put it:
“Evil is turned into Good, and Good into Evil: Truth passes for Falshood; Falshood is dressed up in the Guise of Truth: The best Actions are decried as the worst, if they arise from one Quarter; the worst Actions adored as the best, if from the other.”
This dual standard blinds people to the real nature of power. When blind allegiance to a party replaces independent thought, liberty is among the first casualties.
Tools of Corrupt Power
John Trenchard, writing in Cato’s Letters No. 17, explained how corrupt leaders use factions to manipulate and maintain control:
“They will create parties in the commonwealth, or keep them up where they already are, and by playing them by turns upon each other, will rule both.”
Put differently, parties frequently serve the ambitions of those in power rather than the liberty of the people. Leaders play factions against each other, ensuring that neither side ever gains enough strength to challenge their rule.
“they will make themselves the mediums and balance between the two factions; and both factions, in their turns, the props of their authority, and the instruments of their designs.”
In History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren also warned:
“There is a propensity in mankind to enlist themselves under the authority of names and to adopt the opinions of men of celebrity more from the fashion of the times than from the convictions of reason.”
This tendency allows those in power to elevate themselves at the expense of liberty. As Gordon put it:
“In most Countries, they who blind and enslave the People, are popular, and reverenced; they who would enlighten and free them, hated and persecuted.”
Corruption
Partisan loyalty does more than just blind people to the self-serving nature of politicians. In many cases, it leads otherwise decent individuals to become defenders of unethical behavior – so long as it comes from the “right” side.
As Trenchard wrote in Cato’s Letters No. 16:
“I have often seen honest Tories foolishly defending knavish Tories; and untainted Whigs protecting corrupt Whigs, even in instances where they acted against the principles of all Whigs.”
Here, Trenchard laments the tendency of good people to shield bad actors purely because they share a party label – “Tories” and “Whigs” being opposing factions in 18th-century Britain.
His key point is that even “honest” members of a party will sometimes defend “knavish” or corrupt figures when those figures profess allegiance to the same faction. In such instances, tribal loyalty overrides the basic moral and political principles the party claims to uphold
By extension, people who might otherwise champion liberty become reluctant to criticize their own side, for fear of weakening the party or handing victory to an opposing party. That reluctance, according to Trenchard, is foolish because it excuses wrongdoing and normalizes hypocrisy. The end result is a corrupt ecosystem in which party affiliation, rather than virtue or truth, dictates who is shielded from accountability.
As Noah Webster later noted, “Nothing is more dangerous to the cause of truth and liberty than a party spirit.”
Writing in Cato’s Letters No.?51, Gordon sets out the structural reasons why power and money almost inevitably breed corruption within parties:
“That these things are common, and almost universal, is not strange: Generally speaking, where-ever there is power, there will be faction; and where-ever there is money, there will be corruption: So that the heads of faction, and the promoters of corruption, have from their very characters, which ought to render them detestable, the means of popularity.”
Taken together, Trenchard and Gordon paint a vivid picture of how even well-intentioned factions can serve as vessels for corruption.
When party allegiance surpasses a commitment to liberty and constitutional principles, unscrupulous leaders gain power under the guise of loyalty and unity.
As both writers emphasize, it is the very nature of power – and the money that power commands – that makes corruption and factional infighting so prevalent and, sadly, so enduring.
The Endless Cycle of Revenge
Samuel Adams, in his 1748 essay Loyalty and Sedition, emphasized that true loyalty should not be to any individual but to principles:
“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of ignoring this principle in favor of party politics is the cycle of revenge it perpetuates. As Gordon explained:
“Such is the wild spirit of party: the party which prevails, as if they could fix fate and their own fortune, turn it into arrogance and riot… they oppress and exacerbate their opponents, and consequently invite a retribution of the same merciless treatment whenever fortune changes.”
George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address, warned of this same cycle:
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge… is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
In other words, party rule, fueled by factional infighting, ultimately drives people to seek security in the absolute power of an individual. Washington foresaw that such a system would lead to the destruction of liberty.
“The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
A Mere Walking Machine
Noah Webster, in The Revolution in France, warned that party attachments destroy independent thought and turn otherwise free individuals into mere tools for factional leaders. He began by describing how joining a political “club” immediately distorts a person’s judgment:
“The moment a man is attached to a club, his mind is not free: He receives a bias from the opinions of the party: A question indifferent to him, is no longer indifferent, when it materially effects a brother of the society.”
Here, Webster highlights how simply belonging to a party or faction puts subtle pressure on a person to side with that group, even when the issue in question might otherwise have seemed irrelevant or trivial.
Party loyalty – rather than objective reasoning – becomes the deciding factor.
He then underscored the deeper implications of this bias, suggesting that social pressures within the party can overpower an individual’s principles:
“He is not left to act for himself; he is bound in honor to take part with the society – his pride and his prejudices, if at war with his opinion, will commonly obtain the victory; and rather than incur the ridicule or censure of his associates, he will countenance their measures, at all hazards; and thus an independant freeman is converted into a mere walking machine, a convenient engine of party leaders.”
Once people worry about losing face with their peers, Webster points out, they often abandon their own judgment. Rather than risk ridicule, they endorse policies and candidates they might otherwise oppose and, in doing so, surrender their independence and become nothing more than a tool for the party’s agenda.
The Solution: Independence of Thought
Thomas Jefferson understood this danger and refused to align himself permanently with any party. In a letter to Francis Hopkinson in 1789, he wrote:
“I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever… Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.”
Jefferson believed that independence of thought was essential to preserving liberty. He famously declared:
“If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
Jefferson’s words capture not just the Founders’ suspicion of factions but the conviction that true freedom requires independent thinking. It is, ultimately, an appeal to conscience – warning us never to let tribalism overshadow our moral compass or our commitment to liberty.
A Lesson Unlearned?
Politicians and pundits today stoke anger, fear, and resentment, urging us to rally behind them for fear of what the “other side” might do. Meanwhile, government power – federal, state, and local – keeps expanding.
If there is any lesson we should draw from the Founders, and from those who inspired them – Thomas Gordon, John Trenchard, Sallust and more – it is that no party’s promises are worth the sacrifice of our independence and freedom.
Factional strife, left unchecked, paves the road to despotism, even as it masquerades under the banner of “liberty.”
It is a lesson we have neglected at our peril – and as these centuries-old warnings make clear, unless we heed them, we risk losing the very liberty partisan leaders so loudly claim to defend.