Meum Opus Secundum

I would've titled this "A Reply to Tidball" for the Civil War reference, but that sounds a lot more adversarial than I really mean it. I also apologize for all the political content of my writing thus far, but I felt this second one was necessary. In any case...

Why The Future Depends on Republicans

By John David Breen

The question of whether political parties are good or bad is an old and a difficult one, but when thinking about the government, we must work with the system we have. One must work to find a practical way to the best outcome by dealing with the facts as they are.

Unfortunately, these days it is impossible to get away from working with political parties, for the reason that today’s Democratic party works in an extremely dictatorial way; Democratic senators and representatives are shunned if they refuse to toe the party line. Zell Miller-- the keynote speaker in 1992 at future president William Clinton’s nominating convention--became an outcast, wrote a book about his abandonment by the party, and gave the keynote address at George W. Bush’s nominating convention in 2004. Joe Lieberman, a three-term, well-respected senator from a solidly Democratic state, was ousted by a concerted Democrat primary effort—even though ninety percent of his votes in the Senate agreed with the Democratic Party line.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is made up of people from a very large number of ideologies, something not terribly evident to those of us who grew up in reliably conservative West Michigan. Who are some of the party’s major figures? George W. Bush, a self-described conservative who nevertheless insists on raising spending ever higher; John McCain, a man who has had nothing but hatred for the Religious Right throughout his entire political career; Rudy Giuliani, a pro-choice Republican. Arnold Schwarzenegger, no conservative he, gave a speech at the 2004 Republican convention. To say that the Republican Party has a single unifying ideology, an orthodoxy to be followed by all members at the risk of expulsion, would be a mistake.

There are many reasons why success in the War on Radical Islam is a necessity. The greatest is that Western culture, and all the benefits it has afforded the world, must survive in order that hope for prosperity in even the poorest of countries might not be extinguished by the heavy hand of Sharia law or Eastern-style collectivism. This threat appears on two fronts: the first, the prospect of the eventual imposition of these evils on us from outside, and the second, that of widespread disillusionment with liberalism and democracy if they are seen to stand in the way of society's self-defense.

In the face of the nearly successful effort to unify the Democratic party under one single, supreme, liberal orthodoxy, and considering the gravity of the times, it is simply imperative to the survival of the nation that the Republican party maintain control of the government; not because the Republican party is supreme, not because it alone has all the answers—although they do understand better the seriousness of our enemies—but because only by keeping the Democratic party out of power will we be able to face the dangers posed to this nation by radical Islam.