Democrat, With Misgivings

Yesterday I registered as a Democrat.

No doubt this will draw a lot of fire from County Republicans, but let's examine my reasons.

For much of my young adult life, I was an unaffiliated voter, which meant that the only candidates for whom I could vote in the general elections were those who had been selected by their own parties in the primary elections. Maryland is one of those states where you can vote only within your own party in the primary elections. The end result of this is Extremism.

How so?

Each party tries to distinguish itself from the other party, generally using so-called "wedge issues". Each candidate competes within their own party to most greatly distinguish themselves from candidates in the other part, or from the other party's issues. By the end of the campaign, rather than candidates coming before the voter as colleagues who differ in their opinions, the candidates come before the voters as adversaries. Sadly, this adversarial attitude persists beyond the elections.

In Montgomery County's Councilmanic District 4, Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 3.4 to 1, and barring something approaching divine intervention, no Republican will ever be elected to any office here. Being a member of the Republican Party here, thus, is really mostly an elaborate case of throwing away your vote on all County elections, although in Statewide politics, it's not impossible to have a say.

One of the reasons I was a Republican for so long -- however Centrist a Republican -- was because of certain social trends far to the Left in the Democrat policies. Some of these policies clearly were not working as intended and some of the policies most dear to the Democrats were not merely clear failures, but actual disasters.

As online information systems such as BBSes became global discussion forums and people could talk to each other without all conversations being either managed by organizers and hosts or distributed by a one-sided national broadcast media system, I became aware that I was hardly alone in my disaffection for such things as Stealth Socialist and the Creeping Welfare State Agenda, as such things were beginning to be called by people who only then were starting to talk amongst themselves online. When Newt Gingrich -- a young visionary at the time -- called for his Contract With America, at first I was aghast at about half of it, outside of the call to end "welfare as we know it". Having lived amid the ruins in downtown Washington DC, I had seen firsthand the end results of the Welfare Establishment. I intended to vote for, and support, anyone who would find some way to replace the monolithic failed subculture of multigeneration Welfare "families".

I could not vote for people supporting that sort of clear and obvious failure, so when I finally got around to registering for a party, I registered as a Republican.

Even after the disastrous failures of the Bush II Administration, I remained loyal to some values seen as "core" by most Republicans, values such as giving a fairly free hand to business, especially to small businesses and family-owned businesses. I still remain loyal to a value of lowering the barriers to owning and operating a small business.

Yet I have a lot of values I share with the Greens. I love our Urban Forest and seek to preserve what natural ecologies remain.

I have a lot of "Progressive" ideals, if by "Progressive" you mean a right to join or even create a Union, and also to have a right to work without having to join a Union. I support things like Worker's Compensation Insurance, Disability and Retirement funding, and that sort of thing that everyone has come to accept as a natural birthright to any and all Americans.

I am not a left-leaning Collectivist that wants to impose a Nanny State on everyone, and unlike a certain crew of local Democrats, I strongly support a strong and sovereign United States of America that defends itself from all forms of Invasion, whether armed or unarmed. I am not a Nativist, but I insist that absolutely all immigration laws should be enforced, at all levels of government, from the Federal down to the County or Town level.

I will not let myself be drawn in by, nor drawn into, bizarre rationalizations that let me pretend to feel comfortable with Party policies that simply don't work or which fly in the face of commonsense.

I will vote only for the most Centrist and "American-ist" candidates. I will not vote for any Democrat that is forgetting that "Progressive" does not mean "Socialist" in the Marxist sense of the word. I will not vote for any candidate who seems to think that "social justice" means "kill the white people". I also won't vote for any candidate who won't follow policies of complete egalitarianism towards all citizens and legal immigrants and visitors/workers on valid visas.

I won't vote for any candidate that promotes bizarre interpretations of pseudoscience or liberal-arts as justification for policy that flies in the face of commonsense.

I won't vote for any candidate that I see as being merely a figurehead for religious organizations. I believe very strongly in separation of Church and State. Would I vote for a candidate who was deeply religious? Sure, as long as their faith doesn't blind them to worldly pragmatism. I'm a deeply religious pagan, myself, but I don't let my love of Trout in healthy streams keep me from fishing in those streams, so long as I think the population of Trout is healthy enough for me to fish for them.

I will not vote for any candidate that I see as hostile to the right of women to control their own reproductive destiny, and it is here that I had the most severe differences with the mainstream Montgomery Republicans. I also will not vote for any candidate that I see as being hostile to the right of fathers to be active participants in the upbringing of their children, nor will I vote for any candidate that I see as promoting a future culture where single-parent female-headed families are seen as normal and preferred. I will not vote for any candidate that sees men as nothing more than beasts of burden or menaces to society.

I will not vote for any candidate that I see as being actively opposed to the fundamental American Right to Keep and Bear Arms. While I do believe that convicted felons and florid psychotics should be barred from access to weapons, I concur with the Supreme Court of the United States that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and I support any candidate who supports reform of Maryland Law and County Code to provide law-abiding citizens with a well-regulated right to carry concealed handguns under a so-called "shall issue" policy.

Do you want my vote in the Democrat Party Primaries?

Support nature while supporting progress. Support men as much as you support women and give both the unquestioned right to control their own reproductive destinies. Support a strong America, and support the right of Americans and Marylanders to defend their own persons in public and in their own homes. Support the rights of people to be free from public crime, and support the rights of the people to have a good time in their own way on private property. Support keg parties with live bands. Support the right of the People to be what they want to be, not what the government thinks they should be.