I am neither Republican nor Trumper. I am an independent. If only more journalists were.
I vote for the person and their policies––not the party––based on my Cornhusker common sense and Buddhist compassion for those who bear the brunt of our foreign misadventures: the poor and forgotten.
Lately, there has been some confusion about where I stand politically. As we enter the heart of Election Season, it’s time again to set the record straight.
People mistake me most profoundly if they think I am a Republican or Trumper. I am neither. I am an independent. That holds unless voting for my preferred candidate in a primary necessitates temporarily joining a party.
With his Iron Law of Oligarchy, German political sociologist Robert Michels explained how organizations within democratic societies tend over time to become ossified, seeking crises to perpetuate themselves long after their utility has passed. We see this with today’s Democratic Party, which busies itself with inventing new and increasingly attenuated fight-or-flight threats to civil rights––and accompanying straw bogeymen––to justify its existence. The feckless Republican Party is not much better, having lost its Eisenower-inspired way as a bulwark against extreme consolidation of federal power and growth of the military-industrial-censorship complex.
I vote for the person and their policies, not the party. I do not care about the private lives of public figures, except if they use their public standing for private gain. I choose based on my Cornhusker common sense and Buddhist compassion for those who bear the brunt of our foreign misadventures--the poor and forgotten. I’ve been hardest on Democrats of late because they’ve fallen so hard, so fast, resorting to the most vile instincts in human nature to censor, lie, and suborn their way to victory while projecting their depravity onto the opposition. But, previously, I was merciless in my attacks on the corrupt and adventurist Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bushes 41 and 43.
My favorite politicians are Theodore Roosevelt, Yitzhak Rabin, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, and, wait for it, Richard Nixon (before his dark, paranoid turn). Due to his sundry achievements––the Abraham Accords, American energy independence, containing China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, crushing ISIS, Operation Warp Speed, and Remain in Mexico––Donald Trump could easily have made my list. Democrats were up to all sorts of questionable shenanigans in 2020––including intel chief election interference––but Trump’s bogus election fraud claims that inspired the January 6 Capitol insurrection changed everything for me. I was two blocks away. Like the Democrat-enabled Summer of Insurrection months before, it was terrifying.
My principles remain:
1. Peace.
War should always be the last resort. When chosen, the objective must be clear and achievable with minimal loss of life and always tethered to the national interest. The Iraq War failed that test most egregiously and has done irreparable damage to U.S. standing in the world.
2. Limited Government.
"A government that governs least governs best." There are few projects the government can do better than the private sector, though public-private partnerships can work swimmingly. “My body, my choice” cuts both ways. It’s hypocritical to contend otherwise.
3. Subsidiarity and Solidarity.
With a tip of the cowl to “professional Catholic” mentors Reyn Archer and Jeff Fortenberry, those most proximate to a problem should take the lead in solving it. That starts with the most intimate yet foundational unit, the family. Aristotle wrote in his Politics that the germ of the state is found there. When De Tocqueville reviewed America in the 1830s, he was wowed by the deep, minute, and hyper-local levels of democratic engagement. This has been the indestructible foundation of our longevity. Any party that seeks to concentrate power in Washington, DC, is sowing our mutual destruction.
4. Equal Opportunity, not Equal Outcomes.
You can bring a horse to water but can't make him drink. Even if well-intentioned, all attempts to reward or advance persons based on criteria other than bona fide merit are corrosive to goodwill and the harmony of the republic––fostering division, entitlement, and desultory outcomes in their wake. Such preferential poppycock should be dismantled root and branch. It is un-American at its core.
5. Law and order.
Feelings are not facts. Speech is not violence. Violence is not speech. Good fences make good neighbors. Unless persons feel safe in their homes and communities, including from capricious state overreach, all other social goods—beautification, education, environmental protection, excellence in all matters—struggle to blossom.