["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP. It appears once a week or so.]
Not one but two apologies before the fact: one for temporarily transgressing this site's "gentleman's agreement" proscribing the discussion of politics. And the other for closing the comments. Forgive me for that last, but I lack the emotional fortitude to field and hold everyone's feelings about the current state of national and world affairs. And I'm happily busy these days, not least with a book which I'll tell you about tomorrow.
But this merits saying:
Where "American" = of or pertaining to the U.S. of A.,
A good Republican is an American first and a Republican second (or third, or fourth, or fifth); and
A good Democrat is an American first and a Democrat second (or third, or fourth, or fifth).
Country before faction. The other way around is bad citizenship, and traditionally un-American.
The proper, right, good and best analogy for political parties and factions should come from sports. Democrats and Republicans should be like rival college football teams from different States or schools, such as Oklahoma vs. Nebraska or Army vs. Navy or Harvard vs. Yale. No matter how fervid a fan we are, no matter how much we hope our team might win, no matter how much we detest our opponents, no matter how hoarse we scream ourselves cheering or booing, the whole object is to beat the other team fair and square and with good sportsmanship on the field of play and then shake hands afterward...not to blow up the other team's bus and kill everyone from the coaches to the ballboys dead for real, leaving grieving families weeping by fresh graves.
This deserves saying too: The less united we are, the weaker we are as a nation. The conservative opinion columnist David Brooks wrote an essay on October 15th called "The Rich White Civil War." In it he discusses a report that "breaks Americans into seven groups, from left to right, with names like Traditional Liberals, Moderates, Politically Disengaged and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most active groups are on the extremes—Progressive Activists on the left (8 percent of Americans) and Devoted Conservatives on the right (6 percent)." He goes on to say that both of those groups largely consist of old rich white people whose views are intransigently the opposite of each other's.
The rest of us need to strive to put unity before divisions. The less united we are, the weaker we are as a nation.
It's one week till Election Day. Go team.
This concludes TOP's political coverage for the election season.
The Editor
Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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