The DNC and RNC conventions were the past two weeks. We saw hope and optimism from the Democrats and more fear-mongering from Republicans. How did we get to this? We used to have two different but sensible political parties. Shutdowns or threat of a government shutdown use to be almost non-existent. Now they are the norm. The Republican Party values use to be small government, limited to non- intervention in foreign wars, and prided itself on being a big tent party. Those days are long gone.
I am a Democrat. I have voted for Democratic candidates in pretty much every election. I have never been a Republican but there used to be people in the Republican Party I respected. Most of the Republicans I respected have either left the party or lost reelection. The Republicans had people who stood for Civil Rights like Senators Everett Dirksen and Nelson Rockefeller. Now they have politicians like Senator Jeff Sessions and congressman Steve King who………
Fear mongering and hate have taken over the Republican Party and this began before Donald Trump officially became their party’s nominee for president last week. After the Civil Rights Act passed, the Republicans used the Southern Strategy (which is?) to take back the south. Fear and hatred were used to rile up people when talking about immigration. The RNC convention in particular last week seemed free of any facts. Donald Trump wants to ban Muslims from entering the country and build a wall along the southern border. Discouraging immigration is not patriotic, it is denying who we are as a country.
The Republicans have embraced Trump as their nominee and are denying what this country is made from. The United States was founded to escape religious intolerance and we were built by immigrants. We keep hearing Republicans refer to “real Americans” and say that they want to take their country back. Oh, back to where or from whom? The ideals of America don’t come from a small group of people; they come from everyone in the country and the Constitution from which it was designed. Fareed Zakaria referred to this on his show when he said about Conservatives,
“They are misty-eyed in their devotion to a distant republic of myth and memory and yet they are passionate in their dislike of the messy, multiracial, capitalist-and-welfare-state democracy that America actually has been for half a century – a fifth of this country’s history. At some point, will they come to realize that you cannot love America in theory and hate it in fact?”
I think it is time for Republicans to realize that American and Americans have changed. If they are unable to realize this, then hopefully they will in November.
- Zakaria: Can Conservatives love ‘real america’
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/21/zakaria-can-conservatives-love-real-america/
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