The Aug. 1 editorial “Parties and progress” and Mr. Greg Gerritt’s Aug. 15 letter, “A top priority,” commending it have led me to make a few observations, just for meditation, possibly for quiet discussion (if that’s possible today).

First, how is it that, of all the English-speaking countries, the United States is the only one not using the older parliamentary system, with its two major parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals? Why is it that presently in the United States liberalism is tabbed by so many as almost a watered-down version of communism, that terrible threat of the recent past? And, finally, why is it that money plays such a major role in our politics as it does nowhere else?

The delegates at Philadelphia in 1787 faced an incredibly difficult task, simply because there was not just one colony stretching along the Atlantic Seaboard but 13, some with widely differing attitudes and interests. And 13 was already considered an unlucky number. Issues considered insolvable at the time, such as human slavery, had to be packed under the table.

This, of course, is a common political ploy. In our own day, President Ronald Reagan and his party did not face up to the problem of tripling the nation’s debt, but left the solution to future generations.

The Philadelphia delegates would no more outlaw slavery than President Reagan could levy higher taxes to meet the costs of a strong military defense. Over in London in the 1770s, that crusty old conservative Dr. Samuel Johnson has asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the keepers of slaves?” The delegates shied away from this pertinent question. And in our day, the old 13-state problem has become a 50-state problem. Members of Congress want to hand the welfare problem to the 50 states, hoping for 50 acceptable solutions. That likelihood rates about zero.

Instead of a federal party, we have what is called the Democratic Party, which is no party at all but just an accident of history. At the end of the War Between the States, the Southern politicians, all very conservative, had nowhere to go but into the camp of the opposition to the ruling Republican Party, that is, to the Democratic Party.

It has now taken over a century of change for Southern politicians to realize that their real home is in the conservative Republican Party. Elected as pseudo-Democrats, many have now hopped over not a fence, but an invisible line. The current Perotistas are all Republican except in name, but are playing the role of the dog in the manger. If put in power, their program would be just neo-Republican.

In the other English-speaking countries, new politicial candidates are financed by the party itself. After getting established in Parliament, one is pretty much on his own as far as monetary support is concerned.

I once knew of a college senior who regularly went politicking weekends in a district where there was some chance of unseating the incumbent. This is unimaginable here. Money not only talks but howls and screams. It makes one very pessimistic about the future.

Cecil Reynolds lives in Old Town.