Politics for the Politicians

You have a vision of what this country is, what it was created to represent, what it can be. Is that vision being met in what our current political game has become?

Question:
Why do some people adopt a political party and just stick to it no matter what it does or how it operates? I’m talking about the people who are more faithful to their political party than they are to their friends and even their family; the ones who will condone and forgive more violations of the promises and agreements that brought them to that party, than they would ever condone and tolerate from their spouse. If their spouse did half of what their party does to violate the agreements that created the relationship in the first place, to betray their basic core values, they’d be in divorce court immediately with nothing good to say about their soon-to-be-ex; their political party does the same thing and they jump through hoops to explain it away, to make excuses or worse - to decide that they’ve changed their mind and now they are for that party’s new position. Consequently we have two political parties today who are run entirely by money and power where any and all political platforms are open to adjustment or complete demolition from the slightest whiff of a movement afoot that might be difficult or annoy someone with deep pockets. We now have government not “of, by, and for the people,” but rather, “of, by, and for” dramatic thugs and the wealthy.

When John Kennedy wrote his book, “Profiles in Courage,” he highlighted some of the outstanding statesmen who stood up to the political forces aligned against them for the sake of a principle. Today an author would be hard pressed to find a statesman of any kind and would have to be content with stories of politicians who had stood up to a particularly loud protest, but are the politicians responsible? I mean, I know they aren’t a particularly responsible bunch as a whole, but are they responsible for this state of affairs? I know we do blame them loudly and often, but we are citizens in this country, not subjects. Our politicians and our political parties are supposed to represent and answer to us and it is our duty to make sure that they do. To make our politicians toe the line we have to first draw and hold a line for them to toe and we are not doing that.

We had a good system worked out. Over time two parties emerged in this country that loosely followed a liberal and a conservative agenda that balanced each other nicely. This gave the unrealistic and unyielding idealists, those difficult citizens who are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of any vision, a place to call home. The rest of us who were the heart and soul of the voting public could shift our allegiance from party to party and “throw the rascals out” if they got too full of themselves and stopped listening to us. It was messy, but it worked.

That was then. Today neither party’s political representatives support a really progressive agenda and what once defined conservatism has been brutalized. A massive, invasive and intolerant government is not a conservative value. On many critical policies Obama is Bush on steroids. With the way he has handled matters as diverse as immigration to the environment he must depend on the Republicans to maintain his approval rating for him. If so many of our current Republicans were not so avidly embracing policies promoted by eugenicists like John Tanton and roundly faulting Obama for his new, extreme-law-and-order-have-yet-to-see-a-prison-plan-he-doesn’t-like-or-a-right-he-won’t-gut approach to running our country, those who elected Obama and could elect him again would have abandoned ship by now. They stay because of reaction against, not response toward. Our Deporter in Chief is not applauded for his courageous allegiance to the values upon which he was elected since he has effectively betrayed nearly every one of those. His whole claim to legitimacy at this point resides in the simple fact that he is not a Republican. He has perfected the art of gaining political power through the work of the opposing side.

And what of the Republicans? Listening to right or left leaning media today would have one one assume that “conservative” and “Republican” were synonyms; there was once a time that they very nearly were. Today a fiscally conservative small government that respects the family unit, rewards hard work and honest production and recognizes the rights of the individual is laughably parodied by the most vocal factions of that party. Instead of conservative values they give us intrusive, costly and lawless government agencies; they entertain assaults on the integrity of the family unit through, of all things, attacks on the security and sanctity of childhood; they shamelessly cater to their crudest and most reactionary constituents while ignoring those who have supported conservative values for generations; and they have willingly gone along with the current steady destruction of the rights of the individual to live as he chooses, to own property and determine what will be done with that property, to choose his own path in life and be accountable for that path.

If the Democrats of today insist on promoting and expanding Republican programs and Republicans of today insist on driving people back to the Democrats through sheer revulsion, where does that leave us? Our system of government has been hijacked, but it is OUR system of government. This country chose to be free of a monarchy a very long time ago. We are supposedly not subjects who must answer to our government and in the end both these parties should be answering to us. The majority of people in this country are good, hard-working people. They have no time or place in their heart for hatreds or extreme agendas. The majority of Americans, though they may choose to belong to one party or the other, truly belong to the party of “liberty and justice for all.” The majority of Americans are not being served by either the Democrats or the Republicans today and it is time for the majority of Americans to stand up and take those parties back, make them answer to the values of the American people.