|
How I react to decisions made or contemplated by whoever happens to wield power in this country at any point in time fundamentally depends on how those decisions will effect my life and the life of others like me, and then on how they effect our country. Beyond seeing to my own needs and those of people I know and love, my larger loyalty lies with the American people and beyond that to humanity and the environment. It does not lie with a particular President or political party.
Perhaps in some other era if a major American political party strongly identified with the substance of its platform, a platform that closely reflected my views on the world, and if that platform was consistently and vigorously pursued, I could have felt real loyalty for that party. The modern Democratic Party isn't like that, and neither is the President Democrats elected. The Democratic Party is a balancing of many competing interests, including many of mine. Some times I see my values reflected by it, other times not so much. I almost never see my values embraced by todays Republican Party.
Social Security and Medicare are bigger than the Democratic Party, though the Democratic Party was the vehicle through which they came into being. Long before the Democrats, the American Socialist Party called for programs like them. The people brought Democrats into power to enact Social Security and Medicare. A strong economic safety net became part of the Democratic Party platform when platforms meant more than they do today.
There are things that I love about Barack Obama as well as facets of him that trouble me. He is a man, he is our President, he is not my guru and I do not and will not follow him; not with my eyes closed, and not with my eyes o;en. The Democratic Party is too limited by its current political constraints for me to accept a binary world view on politics. When I am critical either of it or a leading Democrat that does not mean I implicitly provide support to Republicans. It simply means I disagree with Democrats or a specific Democrat on something. Party unity is not a meaningful enough concept for me to cloak my views in a Democracy for it.
Barack Obama and roughly half the members of Congress may be Democrats, but they are also elected officials put there to represent us all in government. What we may owe to them is less than they owe to us. We can not muffle our voices to them. Not even when a Presidential election is looming.
|