Perhaps one can be as agnostic to institutionalized political parties as to institutionalized religions. This does not mean that a person is without god nor allergic to the needs of government.
I believe that we cannot institutionalize wisdom or knowledge of any type. For its institutionalization freezes it into a time setting unrelated to the knowledge of today.
This is readily displayed by the young who believe that their more recent information and knowledge is not only different but of higher quality than that possessed by the elderly.
And it often may be. But this very attitude is institution-forming, tending toward a freezing of knowledge in time sets and place, giving base to what eventually becomes a former wisdom that cannot be applied at a future time and place.
It is what we call wisdom in the true sense that enables us to rationalize all knowledge even the old ( rational and rationalize in its original and primary meaning ).
But the significance of knowledge is that which remains primarily when it is separated from its original institutionalized wrapper.
And perhaps it is the holy season that has brought me to scriptures of old that must be unwrapped to have meaning today.
In the same sense, the problems and perceived solutions that brought the members of the original Republican Party together, the party of Lincoln may not bring solutions to problems of today.
The Democratic Party of the past, the party of slavery and the party of Jefferson can not then bring institutionalized knowledge to play to needed solutions of the problems of this day.
The parties although modified with time are cumbersome in their use as they must bring together all forms of beliefs that deprives them of an openness of mind when made to apply to current problems.
As parties re-shape themselves they re-examine what they call principles, hoping that there are principles there that may give the a new party the recognition it once had.
Just as parties cannot create principles they cannot find them in their mass nor in the party wrappings. Each party defines what appear to be the problems of the day and the perceived solutions and unite around these momentary solutions.
There may or may not be principles that can be applied another day.
It must follow then that a thinking person must be politically agnostic, finding it impossible to believe that things really are what they appear to be.
So a good place to sit is in “the village square,” there to think and discuss and engage in the process of creating knowledge and perhaps exhibiting wisdom.