Josh First's Blog

Party or Principle: To which are you loyal?

Just curious because of the curious elections going on around America right now. Appears that a lot of Americans are loyal to one political party, and not necessarily to a set of immutable principles.

Which are you loyal to, a political party or to certain principles?

Maybe you remember a certain political party back when it stood for certain principles, and I also remember that political party. From my seat now, it is hard to see how either of America’s two main parties have stayed true to a set of immutable principles, though one party has stayed much closer to its original founding ideas (anti-slavery, keeping the American union of states together, ensuring that new states admitted to the Union were not slave states) than the other.

Used to be that adherence to a political party resulted from agreeing with the policies it sought to implement. That kind of loyalty makes sense. It is a linear, logical relationship. And now that we see one of the American political parties so. freakin. far. from its historic beginnings, and yet still commanding loyalty of half of America.

In fact, this one political party is openly devoted to the interests of illegal border jumpers over those of existing American citizens, more supportive of Iran’s IRGC jihadi terror forces than of the American military forces seeking to stop them from nuking America, more supportive of pedophiles and murderers and rapists than of their victims, etc. The list of contrary policy positions is very long for this political party, to which tens of millions of Americans nonetheless pledge their allegiance, their money, and their vote. Imagine that your political party is supported by the IRGC, Russia, China, Cuba, and North Korea….the worst, most oppressive, most cruel, least-free nations all support…the Democrat Party.

Only one explanation for this makes sense to me: Self-destruction is the ultimate virtue signal. 

In our modern digital world of personal signals and attempts to stand out, be unique, get noticed, break loneliness, gain influence or fame, nothing says I am superior to others than hating yourself and voting for policies that destroy yourself.

A willingness to sacrifice your own interests is the ultimate statement of purity, of goodness, or moral superiority, these leftists believe.

Problems with this are two:

One, leftists’ self-destructive (“suicidal empathy”) behavior is not limited to just leftists. They seek to impose this same destruction upon everyone else in America. So much for showing anyone the way and how socialism is supposed to be done right by living it successfully for the rest of us skeptics; nope, it has to be forced on us at gunpoint.

Two, this behavior is based on the super rich irony that you have to be super rich and live in a super rich and organized nation, like America, to indulge fantasies of self destruction. In other words, only spoiled rotten people can dye their hair blue, self-identify as a dog, change their pronouns daily, and also demand expensive lattes and gourmet food. Starving people cannot indulge themselves in self-destructive fantasies, just like those humans who already lived under socialism, and got out alive, assiduously reject it.

In other words, leftists and Democrats view America as this safety net that is too big to fail, too successful to collapse under the weight of this sustained assault. They appear to believe that self-destruction is some sort of atonement, and that their lives will be better afterwards. And people like me say, in response, are you outta your freakin mind!

A great deal of this discussion is encapsulated in a powerful speech given by a Democrat at the Republican National Convention last week. Yes, he is a Democrat whose own family vilifies him for having broken ranks. But you know what? The people who care the absolute most about political party allegiance are not interested in ideas, or principles, or in being consistent, or in supporting the US Constitution. Rather, their political party affiliation is either their business, their family, or their religion.

For many unaffiliated Catholics and Jews, the Democrat Party has become both family and the embodiment of their “religious values.” Not that abortion until after birth or defenseless citizens under the jack boot of all-powerful government are values of Judaism or Catholicism as founded, but to the fallen members of these groups, these kinds of policies have supplanted tradition.

When coupled with the heroin-like dopamine rush these people get for always “voting correctly,” America ends up with tens of millions of uncritical Americans who are not anchored in principle, but who are rather loyal to a political party that changes with the winds.

Even if that political party is destroying the America that protects and feeds them and caters to their every desire and dream. Their silly fantasy about showing how much they care by killing themselves and their interests takes precedence.

People like me inhabit the other end of the many spectrums (emotional, cognitive, religious) involved here. I am loyal to America’s first principles, its founding ideas, like the superiority of meritocracy, not to any political party, and especially not to any political party that deviates so far from America’s first principles.

And I have a tough time understanding anyone who acts otherwise, except to pity them as the in-effect lost-in-space drug addicts they are.

I am loyal to the ideas the old party used to stand for, not for the crazy, self-destructive policies it promotes today. I did not leave the Democrat Party, it left me.