There is a term and concept in Parliamentary democracy called "The Loyal Opposition". Wikipedia notes that it is the concept that a party can be in the minority, and deeply opposed to the party controlling the government, but that their loyalty to the Crown will always be undiminished. Our nation of course does not have a Monarch, nor any comparable institution that unifies the people and transcends politics, but what we do have is an abiding love of, and pride in, our nation, our people and our enduring system of representative democracy. It seems to me that we, as Democrats, would do well to adapt the concept of Loyal Opposition to our current situation. We are, for the moment, out of power for the most part, but despite our electoral woes in some past elections, we have never ceased or wavered in our steadfast loyalty to our nation and its principles.
I have enough respect for my readers to make a bet that you can see where I am going with this one.
It is not difficult to frame the difference between the Republican politicians and the Democratic Party as a classic battle between those who put nation and its people first, as a "Loyal Opposition", as contrasted with the GOP partisans who have in five short years brought such shame to their party and to our nation. But it is not merely a matter of "shame" in the sense of individual self-interest, as the larger shame of placing self and party above that of the nation and the larger and overriding interests of our people and our democracy. In short, the Republicans in office have behaved as if they had no regard for our nation and our democracy, as if they were and are, in short, a "disloyal party in power". None dare call it treason, and perhaps that term is such a powerful one that it ought not to be bandied about. I certainly will not raise that specter, except in one regard, as I will discuss below, but just short of treason there is a level of amoral disloyalty to nation and principle that is repellent and ugly to see. It goes against all that I was raised to hold dear, and to honor as an American.
Let me be specific as to those lessons I learned in school:
I learned to be loyal to our nation, over my individual self-interest. If information was deemed classified or secret, I was raised to believe that it was my patriotic duty to keep that information secure, not to bandy it about the marketplace.
I learned to respect those in uniform. I was taught that any man or woman who was willing to put on a uniform to protect our nation was sacrificing greatly, so the rest of us could continue to enjoy the fruits of our freedom. I knew to respect them, and would never think to put them in harm's way without a compelling reason, or to send them to battle for a lie, or to give them shoddy equipment or insufficient support to fight their battles and return intact to their families.
I was taught that Americans are one people, united. I was never taught to look for wedge issues, or for ways to capture our people group by group by appealing to their niche interests, to build a coalition of interlocked self-interests, rather than a unified nation. I believed that Presidents ought to speak to and for all the people, rather than delivering an organized series of coded signals to their disparate "bases", separated only by bland assurances and evasive statements. That is not leadership.
I was raised to believe that Americans are a kindly people, concerned to correct the plight of the poor, ill and elderly. I was stunned to see that so much of our safety net has been bled dry and staffed with political hacks and cronies that the sad bodies of the dead in New Orleans were left to bloat in the sun as they floated in the fetid waters of "Lake Bush". What I knew, and millions of others knew, is that if those were white corpses someone would have found a way to respectfully take them from the water, and accord them dignity in death.
I was raised to believe that religion in our nation is independent of politics, and rightly so. Where governments begin to fund religion, it is but a short step before those governments demand the right to ask for things in return: votes, loyalty, fealty, labor, political contributions, silence in the face of criminal or disloyal actions on the part of government... the list is a long one. When religions lose their independence, they lose in an important sense their moral compass, their independent pulpit from which to stand and speak of moral matters to those in political power. Without that, our nation is weakened, our society is deeply diminished.
I am of the same generation as George W Bush and I am confident that the schools in Connecticut and Texas where he was schooled must have taught him the same principles that were taught to me. Was he that inattentive a student? or did he and his associates so lack a moral compass that they believe themselves above those guiding principles of our nation, of our democracy? In so many ways, over these last five troubling years, they have shown apparent contempt for the guiding principles of our nation and the rules for our public officials. Worse, in the Plame situation, in what appears to be an attempt to cover up their own falsehoods, they knowingly sacrificed an extensive and complex clandestine operation that was charged with the most serious of all tasks, that of protecting our nation against what we must all agree is the most serious and credible threat against our people, that of a clandestine group being able to smuggle a nuclear weapon onto our soil and use it to sow horror beyond any ever seen or imagined.
What can we call those who used that horrific threat, knowingly, to deceive our people into a war of convenience, apparently as an experiment to see if an abstract theory of world governance could be proven, and then compounded that crime by destroying an organization that actually WAS trying to keep our nation and our people safe from precisely that threat. Is that treason? If not, it surely is at least the gravest act of disloyalty imaginable. Looked at dispassionately (which is difficult to do) this actually was two acts of disloyalty to our nation in one. Those who wonder why Scooter Libby was lying so desperately, and trying to keep Judy Miller silent must realize that the administration realized that they had cried "wolf!" in regard to the gravest statistical threat our nation currently faces, and compounded that sin by weakening our defenses against it. How can one defend or explain those actions? When the story comes out, how can our people forgive those who did such things? All of the decent Republican elected officials who are swept up in the outrage over these actions will be terribly tainted, many of them unfairly. What moral high ground is left to the Republicans? Can anyone name me one thing as a national party that they can rightly be proud of? Our world standing? Our budget? Our health care system? Gasoline prices? Our National Debt? The strength and health of our military? These are not home wreckers, these are nation wreckers.
By contrast, the Democratic Party can take pride in so many of its principled stands for our people and for our nation. Oh, there were mistakes made, no one is perfect, all are fallible and human, but in sharp contrast to the party currently in power, I think we can stand up and proudly identify ourselves as the "Loyal Opposition", with particular emphasis on the word "Loyal". We were paying attention in school, and we "got it", and we never forgot what we were taught to be proud of, and what we as Americans must fight to defend.