Excellent article. I must take issue with the phrase 'partisanship is healthy'
Surely in a direct democracy, individualism is what we seek. In thought, in decision making,in resposibility. Direct democracy entails policy making as a direct result of the majority opinion on an issue and the accepatance of responsibility for the consequences of that policy. When a group of people agree on any issue, there is a natural partisanship, but only on that issue. Said group may have wildly differing opinions on another issue. That's the thing about the technology we have today, you can actually easily gather everybodys' opinion on every single issue. It would be helpful if governments, and media outlets were a bit more ready to publicise the fact.