My question: Why stick with the Republicans or the Democrats? Even those parties started off as small and insignificant. Lay the groundwork for something new for the next generation of Americans.

When Johnson took over, he was very crafty in undermining the Kennedy approach, even using the Kennedys themselves to provide cover on Civil Rights, which were then eviscerated by the excesses of his Great Society, which, instead of following the shrewd insights of Daniel Patrick Moynihan for JFK on the problems with the Black Family, further destroyed that Family structure through welfare and dependency and removing the Father from the family and other corruptions. He felt he had the last laugh on the Kennedys, providing a way for the Dems to keep their constituencies dependent and dependable, and that left the Catholic approach high and dry. He created a wave that, if Ted wanted any credibility within the Party, he simply would be forced to ride. Instead of realizing that moral courage is the essence of political leadership and integrity, he caved, whether from emotional distress and confusion from the deaths of his brothers, or from reaction to his own peccadillo with Miss Kopeckne, and his principled statements started to lose any power beyond his well-cultivated cult of Irish, liberal, and now feminist, followers. He simply became an elitist, appreciated by his rich friends, but ineffectual in pursuing any meaningful and authentic thought to counter the unprincipled socialist dogmas now sweeping the Democratic power centers. He was left in a dead end, and many of those willing to listen before, went for the moral principles represented by Reagan. (Remember that Reagan’s inner circle of confidants and activists were virtually all Catholics.) And the bishops never helped him out of it, because most of them were mesmerized by it.

During Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 run for the Presidential nomination, I founded RFK’s campaign organization on my college campus at San Diego State. During the decade of the 1970’s, however, the Democrats left me behind by advancing the culture of death.

From then on, and enthusiastically after the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s inspiring leadership, I considered myself Republican. During the 1990s, I served three terms as GOP state committeeman in Washington State.

Then came the presidency of George W. Bush. What a relief, as Bill Clinton’s Administration passed into history! To celebrate, I practiced on the piano and performed for friends, “Hail to the Chief.” As it turned out, Chopin’s Marche Funèbre might have been a better choice.

When President Bush launched his “shock and awe” campaign against a 3rd world country that never attacked us, I sorely regretted voting for Bush. The tipping point for me was the “morality” party’s stand on torture, i.e. the unwillingness of Bush, and of most congressional Republicans, to outlaw cruel interrogation techniques against helpless captives. My formal resignation is at,
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2007/dec/18/interrogation-ex-gop-official-quits-party-over/

Leaving the GOP left me in a quandary. I could hardly return to the Democrats, a party that militantly promotes the culture of death. Moreover, I view third parties as politically futile in the context of the American political system.

By a sort of process of elimination, then, I became a man without a party. Since 2007 I’ve counted myself among the one-third of Americans who call ourselves independent.

These thoughts have been in the union play book for a long time, they just found someone who was gullible enough to cooperate with their ideology.

I also see now that their supposed concern for the poor has only encouraged dependency, and their constant push for more dollars for education (unfortunately unopposed by the other major party) has not led to more successfully educated citizens, but only to enormous waste. It is not lacking in compassion toward the poor to believe that giving tax money to a wasteful government system is a far cry from giving to a charity that can be held accountable for its use of funds.

I don’t believe that the Democrats really have the poor in mind even in their push for “health care reform”. If they did, they would design a program specifically for those who need it. Instead, they are making a grab at the entire health care system, and they somehow believe, or pretend to believe, that such a system will be efficient and will reduce costs. Since that is obviously not true, and since they are not simply trying to help the poor with their health care bill, one has to wonder what their goals now truly are.

The Democrats in power now are socialists. They want to take our money and give it back to us as they see fit. Knowing the moral compass they follow, I do not want them deciding how I should live. I don’t really know what the Democrats used to stand for – I wonder if John Kennedy would have opposed many of the things his brother supported – but I know what they stand for now, and for me, my sense of right and wrong outweigh any sense of loyalty to my family history as an Irish Catholic Democrat.

PS – Love your Word on Fire podcast! Although I prefer the old background music over the new…