Posted on 12/01/2003 12:32:13 PM PST by tuckrdout
Is This the Kind of Country That You Want? A Letter to a Republican Friend
By Ernest Partridge Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers October 14, 2003
Note: While I have many Republican friends, none are named “Whitney.” This letter is for all my Republican friends in general, and none in particular. It is also for all Republicans with whom I am not personally acquainted, who are willing to pause and reflect upon the condition of their party and their country, and then upon their consequent duty as citizens of the United States.
Dear Whitney,
At no time in my memory, or yours, I suspect, has the rivalry between the two major parties been more mean-spirited and poisonous.
And yet, despite our separate party affiliations, we remain close friends as we have for all the decades since high school. Moreover, I see no reason for this to change, nor, I trust, do you..
Surely you know that I have never regarded you as a fascist, just as I know that you have never thought of me as a traitor. Yet these are the kinds of labels that are routinely hurled by one fringe of our respective parties against the other.
Such mutual incivility is more than acutely unpleasant, it strikes at the foundation of our republic. Thus it falls upon cooler heads, such as ourselves, to reject the insult and abuse, and to restore the calm civic dialog and mutual respect that is the foundation of a just and secure political order.
Sadly, much more is required if we are to restore our republic to its former health and vigor. For our country and its founding political principles are gravely endangered by a radicalism that has taken control of all branches of our government as well as our mass media.
This means that it has, regretfully, taken control of the Republican Party – your party. It is thus imperative that moderates, such as yourself, take back their party.
I suspect that this stark accusation might put you on the defensive. If you feel that the Democrats also pose a threat to our republic, I invite you to present your case and I promise to consider it carefully. But first, please hear me out,
Our respective political differences manifest more than contrasting political philosophies. These differences issue from contrasting professional perspectives, career commitments, family backgrounds, social contacts, and even religious commitments. Though different, our perspectives on life and politics may be more complementary and compatible, rather exclusive.
I chose an academic career. You opted to join your father’s small manufacturing enterprise. So we encountered government differently. The taxpayers furnished my salary, while government imposed environmental and work safety regulations on your company.
I joined the California Teachers Association – a union. You were management, at the other side of the bargaining table.
In my professional life, I had the privilege of teaching foreign students, corresponding with scholars abroad, and frequently traveling overseas to international conferences. You had to deal with the problem of competition with foreign goods.
As a philosopher, my convictions strayed from religious faith of my childhood. You have remained steadfast in your religious convictions. So, of course, we have different views on the relationship of church and state.
And so, of course, we adopted different attitudes toward government, labor relations, foreign policy, and so forth. Almost inevitably, you have allied yourself with the Republicans, and I have supported the Democrats – albeit often reluctantly, as “the lesser of the evils.”
Our political differences have been a constant topic of conversation between us over the years, occasionally heated, but never placing our friendship in any great peril. You see, we are both moderates. And while, in our arguments, our attention was understandably focused upon our differences, we took little notice of our common ground of commitment and belief.
You correctly describe yourself as a “Conservative.” I am willing to be called a “liberal,” despite the recent disparagement of that once honorable label. However, because of the abuse of that word, I prefer to call myself a “progressive.” “Conventional wisdom” treats “conservative” and “liberal” as opposing point of view. I prefer to see them as complementary. Thus an authentic conservative and a liberal can hold a great deal in common.
For example:
We both revere our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Accordingly, we believe that “to secure these rights" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, "governments are instituted among men.”
Along with the founders of our republic, we share a suspicion of “big government” and thus endorse the protection of our “inalienable rights” as articulated in the Bill of Rights.
We both believe that our elected leaders have a bond of honor to the citizens which requires that these leaders deal candidly, openly and honestly with the people.
We both prize freedom, though you are more inclined to interpret freedom in economic terms, while my attention is directed to freedom of inquiry and expression.
With Jefferson, we both believe that a free press and the open competition of ideas are the life blood of a democracy.
With Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Monroe, we eschew “foreign entanglements” and disavow any imperial ambitions for our country.
Despite our religious differences, we both endorse the “traditional values” that are taught by all the great world religions: tolerance, mercy, charity, compassion, moderation, peacemaking.
We both reject sudden social change through violence or the radical imposition of alien ideologies.
These are all, let us note, “conservative” values, which we learned together from the outstanding public school teachers that taught us history and civics. These values have stood the test of time, and may serve us well today. Neither of us are at all inclined to abolish these principles.
The differences between “conservatism” and “liberalism” are grounded in perspective and in emphases – again, not necessarily in conflict.
Webster’s dictionary defines “conservatism” as “The practice of preserving what is established; disposition to oppose change in established institutions and methods.”
The liberal looks forward to an improvement of the human condition. The best expression that comes to my mind is that of Edward Kennedy, at the funeral of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy:
"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it... As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."
The liberal, then, is a “meliorist” – one who endorses worthy values and institutions received from the past, and who recognizes suffering and injustice in the present which he strives to ease and rectify for the future.
What deserves most to be preserved from the past, and improved in the future? In the specific answer to these questions reside the divergences of our political opinions. But in the general content of these received principles and future aspirations, we are united. It is that concurrence which has bound our nation together.
Until now.
For now I must urge you to look directly and soberly upon your Party. With the aforementioned principles of conservatism firmly in your mind, ask yourself: Does this organization embody your conservative convictions? Do those public figures who so readily describe themselves as “conservative” authentically fit that label? Where your Party is leading our country, do you truly wish to follow?
For consider:
Can you, as a defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, support the Patriot Act, and the fact that under its provisions, at least three of your fellow citizens are today incarcerated without charge, without access to counsel, with no prospect of a trial and release – all this in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth articles of the Bill of Rights?
Can you support an Administration that assumed power through election fraud, the disfranchisement of thousands of our fellow citizens, the violent disruption of official vote counting, and an arbitrary and incoherent ruling by five partisan judges?
Can you, as an opponent of “foreign entanglements” support a war of aggression, launched under demonstrably false pretenses, and provoking a world-wide hostility toward the United States administration?
Can you, as a conservative, sanction a federal deficit this year of half a trillion dollars and several trillion dollars over the next several years, causing an unbearable financial burden upon the generations that follow?
If conservatives believe in limited government, then can you, as a conservative, accept without protest, government surveillance of your book purchases and your e-mail? Is it the business of the government to interfere with a woman’s control over her own body?
Conservatives uphold the rule of law. Can you then condone the arbitrary violation of laws by the President and members of his administration – including the Presidential Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the law forbidding the “outing” of covert CIA agents and organizations?
Conservatives insist upon responsibility and accountability. Can you then allow exceptions by such well-placed individuals such as Ken Lay, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove?
As a conservative who believes in free markets and free enterprise, are you not concerned about the growth of monopolistic cartels and conglomerates which stifle and absorb competitors (e.g., Microsoft). Are you troubled by the fact that virtually all broadcast media in the United States are owned and controlled by six corporations, and that the corporation- friendly Federal Communications Commission has ruled in favor of still greater media market concentration? Are you aware of the devastation that WalMart has caused to small town business throughout the country?
If these trends and conditions trouble you, then you are in agreement with this liberal, for we both find in this list a violation of our shared political and economic convictions.
For this reason, I refuse to describe the ideology and policies of the controlling faction of your party as “conservative.” Far better to describe it as “right-wing” or “radical right.”
Consider next, the corruption of our politics. The right wing has repudiated our tradition of civic friendship, and instead regards its political opponents as “traitors.” Liberal policies are condemned, not merely as erroneous or misguided, but as “evil.” Politics today has become “warfare by other means,” wherein it is not enough to defeat one’s opponents in a fair election; the opponent must be destroyed. Witness the attacks on the Clintons, and on John McCain in the South Carolina primary of 2000.
Thus our once-united national community is being split into warring factions as we forget our common loyalties and lose the capacity to act in common purpose.
There may be among your fellow Republicans, individuals who would respond, “spare me all this ideological Choctaw. My politics is guided by my self-interest, and it is clear to me that Republican policies are best for my investments, my business, and my personal prosperity.” Surely such a consideration is at least an ingredient of the Republican case.
However, on close examination, even the appeal to self-interest fails the radical right. Be honest, now: would you trade your investment portfolio today with the one you had when Bill Clinton left office? Don’t you feel at least a little anxious about the direction of the Bush economy – with ever increasing unemployment, ever-decreasing consumer confidence and disposable income, interest in the national debt soon to become the largest item in the federal budget, and half of that national debt owed to foreign creditors? In point of fact, throughout the twentieth century, the stock market has performed better under Democratic presidents and congresses. . (See also). History confirms Harry Truman’s observation, “to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat”.
(Excerpt) Read more at crisispapers.org ...
Look at the second item linked on this page of the crisis papers. So much for "civility."
He must of been alseep during the Clinton years. Too many wrongs after this first one to take anything he says seriously.
Everytime your type gets into a position of power, the mass graves start to appear. You bet your ass I hate your guts. I wish you'd burst into flames.
Sincerely, Wiz
I've seen this tack on the part of the manipulators on the left so many times it's creaking at the knees by now. It's simply this - "you're not living up to your standards, and hence you're a hypocrite. I'll cite those standards long enough to support the accusation but I have no intention of living up to them myself." This line has been pretty hot stuff on campus for the last, oh, forty years or so, but it's a little long in the tooth for the open market.
Who's fault is that? Which recent Democratic Administration invented the concept of "politics of personal destruction," and simply wasn't satisfied to beat an opponent at the polls, but had to rip their fingernails out in the process?
The entire Democratic Party is guilty of "projection" and "transference" -- ascribing to others what they themselves are most guilty of.
"If only you'd admit I'm right about everything, we'd get along perfectly!" sez Ernest, the slowest and stupidest member of the Partridge Family. The one that was only brought out in public when the band started losing control of the crowd - his trick of biting the head off a live Raimondo was guaranteed to bring them back around...
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