Thursday, June 22, 2006
Independence
If you have known me for a while, you know that I have always been very politically active. 14 years ago I was the picture of the fire-breathing young conservative: brash, opinionated (I even wrote a column back then for the local newspaper), well-read in the classics of conservative thought (Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, Edmund Burke, William F. Buckley, and many, many others), and always finding ways to get involved in the political scene. As recently as three years ago I was living in Washington, DC and getting little articles published by the American Enterprise Institute and attending networking happy hours with a whole host of right-of-center organizations. I was a political junkie and I was fairly well-connected.
Then I went to Iraq. I saw what the reality of the situation over there, and I saw what this country has allowed itself to become under our current stewardship. And no, I don't mean what the people of America have become, rather what America now means to the rest of the world. I saw an Administration make nothing more than cosmetic changes to a war plan that cleearly wasn't working. I saw our President (who I voted for... twice) pretend to act to stop one of the worst examples of America distancing itself from its core principles, all the while winking at the egregious acts perpetrated by people who were following orders from on high. I heard the Vice President say the insurgency was in its "last throes" and I laughed on the outside, but cried on the inside.
Meanwhile back home, lobbyists were writing legislation, the Administration was strong-arming its own party over every conceivable issue, midwest and southern voters were being scared into submission by the menace of a bunch of people whose love apparently threatened them and everything they stood for, a Republican President signed literally every piece of legislation that crossed his desk, a Republican Congress indulged itself in the very pork barrel spending it had gotten itself elected to combat, a group of religious zealots was gaining in power, allowing poppycock notions like "Intelligent Design" and "America's Christian History" to gain significant political ground, graft and corruption at all levels of government reached a fever pitch, and the size and scope of the Federal Government grew faster than it had ever done under that "tax and spend liberal," Bill Clinton.
The Republican Party had become as bad, or worse, than the Democrats ever were when it came to upholding anything resembling a conservative principle.
Today I did something about it. For the first time in my life I registered as a Democrat.
You have no idea how big a step this is for me. Once upon a time I loved my party and I loved the intellectual force behind the ideas it claimed to stand for. When I was working at a think tank in Washington, DC back in 1994, I was swept away by the energy of the Contract with America and everything it stood for. I partied with Newt Gingrich, for heaven's sake! I sang "Happy Birthday" to Pat fricking Buchanan! At his private residence!
But the Republican Party is nothing like what it claims to be. It cares more about denying basic rights to homosexuals than it does about balancing the budget. It cares more about scaremongering over illegal immigrants than it does about ensuring that the American dream is still achievable. It cares more about staying in power than actually following through on what it was elected to do. This doesn't describe every GOP lawmaker of course, but it does describe the leadership, and it certainly describes the President.
The Democrats aren't exactly in good shape, incidentally. There is much that they stand for that I disagree with. But I find that today I have more in common with the party of Kennedy than the party of Reagan. Goodbye, GOP. I hardly knew ye.
http://www.forret.com/tools/trackback.asp?title=Independence&blog_name=Decline and Fall&url=http://www.declineandfall.net/2006/06/independence.html
Then I went to Iraq. I saw what the reality of the situation over there, and I saw what this country has allowed itself to become under our current stewardship. And no, I don't mean what the people of America have become, rather what America now means to the rest of the world. I saw an Administration make nothing more than cosmetic changes to a war plan that cleearly wasn't working. I saw our President (who I voted for... twice) pretend to act to stop one of the worst examples of America distancing itself from its core principles, all the while winking at the egregious acts perpetrated by people who were following orders from on high. I heard the Vice President say the insurgency was in its "last throes" and I laughed on the outside, but cried on the inside.
Meanwhile back home, lobbyists were writing legislation, the Administration was strong-arming its own party over every conceivable issue, midwest and southern voters were being scared into submission by the menace of a bunch of people whose love apparently threatened them and everything they stood for, a Republican President signed literally every piece of legislation that crossed his desk, a Republican Congress indulged itself in the very pork barrel spending it had gotten itself elected to combat, a group of religious zealots was gaining in power, allowing poppycock notions like "Intelligent Design" and "America's Christian History" to gain significant political ground, graft and corruption at all levels of government reached a fever pitch, and the size and scope of the Federal Government grew faster than it had ever done under that "tax and spend liberal," Bill Clinton.
The Republican Party had become as bad, or worse, than the Democrats ever were when it came to upholding anything resembling a conservative principle.
Today I did something about it. For the first time in my life I registered as a Democrat.
You have no idea how big a step this is for me. Once upon a time I loved my party and I loved the intellectual force behind the ideas it claimed to stand for. When I was working at a think tank in Washington, DC back in 1994, I was swept away by the energy of the Contract with America and everything it stood for. I partied with Newt Gingrich, for heaven's sake! I sang "Happy Birthday" to Pat fricking Buchanan! At his private residence!
But the Republican Party is nothing like what it claims to be. It cares more about denying basic rights to homosexuals than it does about balancing the budget. It cares more about scaremongering over illegal immigrants than it does about ensuring that the American dream is still achievable. It cares more about staying in power than actually following through on what it was elected to do. This doesn't describe every GOP lawmaker of course, but it does describe the leadership, and it certainly describes the President.
The Democrats aren't exactly in good shape, incidentally. There is much that they stand for that I disagree with. But I find that today I have more in common with the party of Kennedy than the party of Reagan. Goodbye, GOP. I hardly knew ye.
