DIVIDED WE STAND UNITED WE FALL – dwsuwf
One of Earliest American Opinion leaders and elder statesman Benjamin Franklin argued that a good legislature was divided one. “It is not enough that your Legislature be numerous. It should be divided”. He goes on to demonstrate that it is necessary if the legislature is to be above reproach that there be many and varying opinions in the Legislature. Divided opinions provided for a common direction and unity of purpose. It is necessary that there should be a unitary and therefore single Executive to provide for decisiveness of action and insure against conflict of interest. However, this should be counter-balanced by a divided and numerous Legislatures which ensure that the guiding legislation is above reproach.
Before passing the laws and therefore committing to action, a Nation should question the action exhaustively and only pass it if can be demonstrated that it is in service of common interest that the legislation be passed. Therefore, in his argument, Benjamin Franklin implies, divided we stand, and divided we stand had benefit of long experience and service in statecraft. there’s no mention to the other part of the sentence and therefor the short cut dwsuwf. He had served as the American Minister to France during the American Revolution. In this position he secured French military and financial aid that effectively turned the tide of war of revolution and secured American Independence.
In a closed body and autonomous body like the legislature wisdom is a specific quality. It is the product of the number of members in the Legislature and the wisdom and the individual expertise, competence, honesty, knowledge and judgment. It is therefore necessary that the legislators of be diverse backgrounds and expertise that would enable them to have access to expertise information to wide range of issues that might confront a body representing and safeguarding national interests. There should be contrary opinions and differing interests in a legislative assembly that should guarantee counter interests and contrary opinions that would incapacitate any parliamentary faction from ascending into unquestionable supremacy. When such a state of events prevails and one faction becomes entrenched in power the form of government changes from a parliamentary democracy into monarchy, autocracy, or dictatorship.
One of the inspirations of Benjamin Franklin in his argument for his political theory that could be best described as “divided we stand, united we fall” political theory was the state of affairs in Britain at the time. Though Britain at the time was divided into two legislative houses the system of government in actual practice was absolute monarchy. King George III had disregarded parliamentary advice and immersed Britain in a prolonged, expensive and unjust war that ended as a global war in which Britain lost sizeable overseas territory.
Confronted with such a scenario a divided and powerful legislature would not have in all probability gone into war. The contrary and numerous opinion would have divulged that Victory was far from certain and that even if the war should be won there would be no way of justifying the cost nor ensuring non recurrence of the same in the future. A sustained, honest and public debate would have revealed that the only way to deal with the demands of the colonists was to listen to address some inherent injustice in the political dispensation of the day.