Like the vast majority of teens and young adults from my generation who were the first to vote at age 18 (the 26th Amendment in effect on July 1, 1971), I was the typical youthful know-it-all full of ignorant naiveté and ideas that were in line with the liberal mindset that bordered on socialist utopianism. I argued with my father—sometimes close to the point of fist-fights—over political issues of the late 60s through the mid-70s. On several occasions, he pointed out that perhaps I should put my principles into action and flee from the obvious tyranny of living under his roof and his rules that his principles and labor had provided.
Yep, I was the typical young and principled Democrat. I was an idiot. My father understood, gritted his teeth on many occasions, and, I’m sure, continued to repress his desire to punch me out after I had deliberately worked to push his buttons. I never gave him the credit he deserved.
Then I got a little older and began to run into the realities of life and how the world works. I became politically conservative and identified as a Republican by the time I was voting in my second Presidential election in 1980. I was also in a ten-year military stint that had me traveling to new places in this country as well as 26 others. Those experiences also shaped and cemented my conservative political principles. It’s funny how smart my father became as I went through that decade.
The ebb-and-flow of power and parties continued through the 80s, 90s, right up to the election in 2000 when politics became incredibly divisive. The trend continued and only got worse when Obama became President-Messiah and as his destructive agenda proceeded without a hitch in the first two years with the Democrats holding the White House and super-majorities in both Houses. But his/their over-reaching resulted in a swing back toward the Republicans starting with the 2010 mid-terms. The Republicans would restore sanity.
They did not.
Obama, unbelievably, got a second term, but the Republicans won control of both Houses and I thought for sure the tide would change and they would redeem themselves. Once again, they did not. Republicans over the last eight years were as poor an example of an opposition party (often called Republicrats/Democrat-Light) as there has ever been—just the flip side of the same coin. The damage they allowed to be done by that occupant of the White House and the administrative state he presided over will always be with us—and on them.
As a Conservative Republican, my disappointment with the party turned into open anger and I ceased to identify as one, choosing instead to identify myself only as a conservative.
I realized that the system itself was so large and out of control, perverted beyond all recognition of what the founders had debated about for so long and finally forged. I recognized our government was destroying the foundational fabric of the republic as a political system, and country. That realization began to constantly eat away at me, validated every time I read a story of the latest posturing and gamesmanship that has replaced statesmanship as the apparent core value and purpose of our political parties and institutions. Competent governance is an inconvenient nuisance to both parties that interferes with their power & plunder games.
And so it seems I have come full circle, déjà vu all over again, but with a twist. My ennui is such that I find myself embracing ideas and principles that may be as unpractical and utopian as when I was a teenager. But I am far from being a teenager, now with many decades more life experience under my belt. This time the stakes are higher, to wit:
There is an immediate need to halt the continuing slide of this country into oblivion as both parties have moved more dangerously left and polarized within themselves, and polarized the country in ways not seen since the Civil War, which may be where we are headed again. This time, the republic will not survive.
It is time for me to get more seriously involved in the process to bring about a truly conservative third-party capable of breaking the dominance and damage done by our default into a two-club system that often differs in name only, forcing them to move right, back to the reasonable middle, restore accountability, competence, trust, and save the concept of the United States of America.
Step 1: Break from the past.
I filed to change my registered party affiliation from Republican to Unaffiliated.
I have now received the formal acknowledgment of that change from the commissioner of registration for my county.
Step 1: Completed.
