The Republican Party is no longer loyal to its once-prized conservative values of individual responsibility, integrity, morality and thrift. It has become insular, divisive, dishonorable and intemperate. It is becoming insurrectionary.
The Republican acquiescence to division and disruption in exchange for power and position to win a few piddling policy battles is deplorable. This kind of politics should be denounced not only by Republicans but by all Americans.
Once American conservatism represented prudence, promoting individual responsibility and liberty that would eventually produce a prosperous and a more perfect Union capable of elevating even the lowest among us. Unfortunately, neither American conservatism nor liberalism today has the capacity to effectively inspirit their respective political parties organized to help achieve their Elysian aspirations. The demonstrable defects within the two existing major political parties are morally and financially bankrupting America.
It is not for nothing that common citizens are becoming insurrectionists. They have watched the two major political parties overspend the nation’s resources at their expense. They have watched them prop up depraved foreign governments with their taxed treasure and then later tear them down with the blood of their brood. They watch both parties indulge the elite, while disregarding their desperation.
These forgotten Americans know their dreams for themselves and their children will not be realized. They feel so aggrieved and enraged they are resorting to championing contemptible characters willing to dynamite everything they believe is damaging them.
Shamefully, many party and religious leaders are encouraging them to see and hear no evil. Instead of calling for higher principles and purposes, heretofore required for political support, they take to their podiums and pulpits inflaming discontent and discord to prop up political provocateurs they anointed to access power and influence. That which was once called evil by them is now excused to justify their faustian bargains. This is the very definition of political and religious apostasy — an apostasy consuming the Republican Party and imperiling America.
It is increasingly difficult to imagine the continuation of a nation unified by liberty and peace, when the political and religious classes are so undiscerning, supporting corruption complicit with abominable adversaries trying to diminish the democratic institutions and values that made America the most powerful, prosperous and principled of any nation throughout the long history of the world.
Elected and appointed government and military officials swear an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, which formed a remarkable republic. This oath demands the Republican Party, if it has any honor left at all, unshackle itself from the fraudsters it elected to high places and restore the authentic conservative values that once so ably protected and prospered all Americans.
The oath taken by courageous patriots is all that stands between indifference and the Constitution; that stands between conspiracy and the Constitution; and that stands between tyranny and the Constitution. Thankfully, it remains nonnegotiable for those faithful few still willing to sacrifice their all to save the rights, freedoms and the separation and balance of power exceptionally embodied in the American Constitution.
The oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
So help America!
Stuart C. Reid is a former Salt Lake City Council member and Utah state senator and Army chaplain.