|
| |
The Gadfly Bytes --
October 21, 2008
“Country First?” – The Question of Loyalty
Ernest Partridge, Co-Editor
The Crisis Papers
“Not that I loved Caesar less,
but that I loved Rome more.”
Brutus, in Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
“I am an American, first and foremost.”
Colin Powell
Millions of American citizens who identify themselves as “Republicans”
are coping with a daunting question: “What is the primary object of my
loyalty? My Party? My Country? My religious faith? My conscience?”
The question is implicit, for few American citizens of whatever
political persuasion would openly admit to themselves that loyalty to
their party trumps loyalty to the United States. Instead, to the degree
that they support their preferred party and its candidates, they
routinely convince themselves that they are at the same time exhibiting
loyalty to their country.
But when a party, its candidates, and its elected officials, stray from
the founding moral and political principles of the American republic and
its Constitution, party loyalty compels the adherents to conjure up
elaborate rationalizations.
For steadfast Republicans, those rationalizations have been severely
strained as the Bush/Cheney regime has relentlessly dismantled the
Constitution of the United States, along with the rule of law and
international treaties. The list of crimes and misdemeanors is long and
woefully familiar: signing statements, ignoring Congressional
subpoenas, violation of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions against
torture, launching a “war of choice” against a non-threatening nation
(in violation of the Nuremberg Accords), warrantless searches in violation of the Fourth
Amendment to the Constitution, etc.
Throughout all this, most Republicans (including all Congressional
Republicans), have remained “on the reservation,” at worst publicly
supporting the outlaw regime, and at best keeping their misgivings to
themselves.
However, as we reach the waning days of this presidential election
campaign, the rationalizations are beginning to unravel among many
prominent Republicans and conservatives, as they face directly the
conflicting answers to these two simple questions:
-
Which candidates, McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden,
will best serve my Party? The question, as they say, virtually
answers itself: the nominees of the Party, McCain and Palin.
-
Which of these candidates will best serve my
country?
It takes a virtuoso application of self-deception for a
thoughtful and informed Republican to arrive at the same answer to both
questions. And if the answers diverge, that Republican comes
face-to-face with an agonizing conflict of loyalties: my party first or
my country first.
On Sunday, Colin Powell announced his decision. He would vote for Barack
Obama.
Thus Powell joins a flow of GOP and conservative defections,
including:
-
Conservative pundits Michael Smerconish, Andrew
Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Buckley have openly
endorsed Obama. Also Ronald Reagan's Director of Arms Control,
Ken Adelman.
-
Conservative columnists George Will, Peggy Noonan,
Kathleen Parker, William Kristol, David Brooks, and Charles
Krauthammer have severely criticized the GOP candidates, McCain and
Palin, without actually endorsing the Democratic candidates.
-
For the first time in its 160-year history,
The
Chicago Tribune endorsed the Democratic candidate. Also switching
over to the Democrats from the 2004 election, The Denver Post, The
Houston Chronicle, The Salt Lake Tribune, The New York Daily News,
among twenty-five leading newspapers identified by Editor and
Publisher.
-
In general, reports
Greg Mitchell of
Editor and Publisher, Barack Obama leads
in newspaper endorsements “by a better than 3 to 1 margin (103 to 32
at last count). In contrast, when we did our final count in 2004,
John Kerry barely edged George Bush, 213-205, and in elections
before then, the GOP candidate almost always took the lion’s share
of endorsements.”
This flow of defections might, in the next two weeks,
become a flood. If it does, barring massive election fraud, this flood
will surely sweep away the faltering candidacy of John McCain and Sarah
Palin, and send Barack Obama to the White House.
The reasons for these defections are many and, to those who have been
following the campaign, familiar. The Crisis Papers
has
collected and linked to numerous internet and media criticisms of
the GOP candidates and their campaigns, so I will not repeat them here.
Instead, I will focus on what strikes me as the over-arching reason for
the apparent collapse of the McCain/Palin campaign: John McCain has
lost, and Sarah Palin has failed to gain, credibility as qualified
occupants of the offices that they seek. They have thus disqualified
themselves by the quality of their campaigns, by their performances in
the debates (which
can be seen here in full), and by their brazen willingness to assert
and repeat demonstrable lies. In McCain’s case, these include the
assertions that Obama’s political career was launched in the apartment of
William Ayres, and that Obama would raise the taxes of most Americans.
In Sarah Palin’s case, the claim that she opposed the so-called “bridge
to nowhere,” and that she was “completely exonerated” by the official
Alaska “Troopergate” investigation.
Unlike charges of “liberalism” or “socialism,” which are vague and thus
open to endless interpretation and dispute, the above assertions are
flatly false, provably false, known by both McCain and Palin to be
false, and therefore correctly described as “lies.”
Faced with candidates that have thus disqualified themselves, with a
party that has abandoned its conservative principles to religious
fanatics and charlatans, and with an opposing candidate who, in his
campaign, displays integrity, poise, legal education, and competence,
what is the traditional Republican to do?
That hypothetical Republican is presented with a fundamental moral
conflict and a test of moral maturity.
In his monumental treatise, A Theory of Justice (1971, pp. 490-1), John
Rawls describes the growth in moral capacity from a “morality of
authority” through a “morality of association” to a mature “morality of
principles.” (I have much more to say about conflicting loyalties
and moral development in my
“On Patriotism”). Applied to the present case, these hypothetical
Republicans, along with millions of independents and a few wavering
Democrats, must choose between conflicting loyalties: to their political
mentors (morality of authority), to their political affiliations
(morality of association), or to the founding principles of our
republic, in addition to an acceptance of the “reality-based” account of
the planetary emergency as described by the sciences (morality of
principles).
Upon that choice, rests the future of our country and, given the
environmental and economic policy issues before us, the future of our
planet.
“Country First?” That remains to be seen, in two weeks and
beyond. Whatever the outcome of the election, the struggle is not over.
It simply enters a new phase.
Copyright 2008 by Ernest Partridge
Ernest Partridge's Internet Publications
Conscience of a Progressive:
A book
in progress.
Partridge's Scholarly Publications. (The Online Gadfly)
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field
of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at
the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He
publishes the website, "The Online
Gadfly" and co-edits the progressive website,
"The Crisis Papers".
His e-mail is: gadfly@igc.org .
|
