As I have been pondering the various Presidential candidates in preparation for today’s primaries in New Hampshire, I realize I am frustrated by and disgusted with both the Republicans and the Democrats. I will probably, before the Presidential election, change my voter registration from Republican to “unaffiliated.” (I am tempted to change it to Communist, merely because it would generate some interesting mail.)
What do we see in Washington now? Infighting. Foot-dragging. Stonewalling. Blame-gaming. Anything except working together to improve the conditions of our country or solve its current problems. Of course, we do have plentiful bipartisan distribution of corruption and dishonesty. Grow up, Congress!
It’s time to form a new political party. Call it the Right Party. It’s guiding principle would be to do what is right. To do what is morally right. To do what is right for our country. To do what is right for its citizens. To do what is right for our world. To do what is right for our future.
Some things are obvious: It isn’t right, for example, to embezzle funds, deny habeas corpus to US citizens, or accept bribes. It isn’t right to choose political expediency and present half-truths to forward a particular agenda.
Many decisions would be easier to make. It would not be right, for example, to ignore the genocide in Darfur if there was any possible way we could work to end it or aid its victims. It wouldn’t be right to offer another amnesty to illegal immigrants. (It would also not be right to ignore finding a way to replace 8 to 12 million illegal workers on which our industries depend.) It wouldn’t be right to appoint Supreme Court justices who believe it is their job to twist the Constitution outside its historical context. (We have a prescribed amendment process for updating the Constitution when necessary.) It would not be right for our future to pretend global climate change isn’t happening, or ignore the gathering momentum to eliminate pollution and dependency on nonrenewable fuels.
Some positions would be harder to determine. Finding the answers to such quandaries as funding human cloning research using processes where viable embryos are not destroyed would require something not valued in Washington or perhaps in our nation at large: thinking. We would have to abandon the name-calling, generalizing, and labeling and get back to a discussion of the issues that matter.
The Right Party: Making the right decisions … doing what’s right.