The Gargler gargles:
Vox.. you’re pretty fond of a little saying. “Tell it to the whigs!”. Ah what a battle cry! It summons up images of the possibility of rebellion within the politcal world… Sadly its inaccurate. The Whigs were never anything to be feared, and calling them well organized is simply ignoring history. We’re talking about a party that lasted an astounding 16 years, from 1834 to 1850. That’s the official story anyway, though the initial party coalition actually started in 1824, when some boys got together to try to whip Andy Jackson (Tennessean by the way). I suppose we could give them credit for 26 years then huh?
Nate would have somewhat of a point, if one were so myopic as to reduce world history to American history. I use “tell it to the Whigs” to illustrate the shallow thinking involved in assuming that a two-party system is eternal. First, the very fact of the American Whigs relatively brief political lifespan supports my point, second, the British Whig party was one of the first modern political parties and was part of a now-defunct two-party system with the Tories, or Conservative Party. The remnants of was variously known as the Country, Whig and Liberal Party now survive in the Liberal Democratic Party, but the Liberals were replaced as the primary British opposition by Labour around 1925.