For as long as human beings have lived in settled communities subject to political (rather than familial) authority, there have been political factions — as well as politicians decrying the existence of political factions! Most people agree about most things most of the time, goes one common line of argument, but we’re kept artificially divided by internal elites or external foes.
Hyperpartisan rancor and the politics of personal destruction are, indeed, often stoked by those whose interests lie in conflict, conquest, or chaos. But political differences themselves aren’t artificial. They are natural. “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed,” wrote James Madison in Federalist 10. Indeed, the very freedoms to speak, publish, and organize that make self-government possible are “to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires,” he explained.
What Madison and the other Founders couldn’t know, at least not with any degree of empirical confidence, is that political differences don’t just reflect different factual assumptions or applications of reason. Parental influence, social conditions, and innate personality traits also help to explain why you and I might disagree on some economic, social, or foreign policy.
In recent decades, for example, social scientists have used two personality assessments, the Big Five (OCEAN) and the HEXACO, to compare apparently nonpolitical traits to stated political preferences. The acronym OCEAN stands for Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The later typology, HEXACO, added Honesty/Humility, converted Neuroticism to the less negative-sounding Emotionality, and switched some other things around. To make a very long story short, multiple studies have found that higher scores on Conscientiousness and Extraversion tend to correlate with right-leaning views on both economic and social issues while higher scores on Openness and Neuroticism tend to correlate with left-leaning views.
This does not mean that most conservatives are domineering control-freaks or close-minded automatons, or that most progressives are lazy wallflowers or empty-headed neurotics. The correlations are relatively modest and rely on debatable choices of definition and data. Furthermore, even well-established tools such as HEXACO and the Big Five capture only certain aspects of personality, and they don’t necessarily stay the same over the course of one’s life.
Context matters. Consider Madison’s own time. We know how the American Revolution turned out. His contemporaries didn’t. Its fate was an open question. During the Revolutionary War, some colonists were Patriots, others Loyalists, and a third group (which may have even been a plurality) had mixed views and just wanted it to end.
Here in North Carolina, the Patriots were larger, louder, and politically dominant. At the Fourth Provincial Congress, held in Halifax in April 1776, delegates instructed North Carolina’s representatives to the Continental Congress to vote for independence — the first colony to do so. Then they made plans to hold a Fifth Provincial Congress later in the fall to write a new state constitution.
North Carolina’s Tories disliked these developments, of course, but the Patriots themselves were far from unanimous. Two clear sub-factions emerged. One leaned conservative, favoring stronger executive authority and relatively limited war aims. Another leaned radical, favoring a broader franchise, a weaker executive, and a definitive, permanent separation from Britain.
Some of North Carolina’s best-known leaders were conservatives, including Edenton attorney Samuel Johnston. He presided over the Third and Fourth Provincial Congresses. But 250 years ago this week, voters in most counties and municipalities chose radicals, not conservatives, to represent them at the upcoming Fifth Congress. Shockingly, Johnston was one of those defeated candidates.
It would be another Patriot, Richard Caswell, who presided over the Fifth Congress — and Caswell, not Johnston, who became the first governor of our independent state.
Factions are inevitable. Factions need not be fractious, however. Any political coalition broad enough to obtain and wield power will necessarily include multiple factions. Our Founders found ways to work together despite their many differences. We can, too — and should.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books "Mountain Folk," "Forest Folk," and "Water Folk" combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
