The State of the "Union"

During the 2004 election, we were in the middle of a disastrous war. John Kerry, who by most accounts was a sorry excuse for a candidate, did at least one thing right: he led the Democratic Party's criticism of the way George W. Bush and his administration had prosecuted that war. It was a logical continuation of Kerry's commitment to telling the truth, the same as he did when he had returned from Vietnam and testified before Congress about how wrong that war was.

There are two things I remember from that time above all else. The first of them was a story I was reading back then which detailed a conversation a man in Arkansas or Tennessee was having with his teenage daughter. She was asking her father why John Kerry was criticizing the war and the president. Her father answered, "Because he hates America, honey."

The second thing I remember was an argument I was having with my father, a twice-Clinton voting Republican who now inhales Fox News the way he used to inhale tobacco. (Actually, I don't mean to diminish his convictions like that; I just don't see how someone as smart as he is can vote for a party that stifles dissent almost as effectively as Josef Stalin, how someone who served in Vietnam and put broken bodies back together can side with a political party that so quickly chooses war before diplomacy, how a man who raised his three sons to be strong and independent thinkers now struggles mightily to accept a single point that doesn't comport with what Hannity or O'Reilly or Hume said that day.) I was arguing that Bush lied about WMD, about the Saddam-9/11 connection, and did not repudiate the Swift-Boat campaign against Kerry, making him just as culpable for perpetuating that lie as those who created it. There was also a resolution being introduced in the Senate to call for an end to the war. Dad argued that when a country is at war, it's just not American to criticize the President over the war. His implication -- which I am recalling as an implication because I don't remember if he actually said this -- was that we should all just get in line behind the President, to project one unified view in support. Otherwise the world would perceive us as weak and the enemy would exploit that in its prosecution of the war.

Today I read two columns -- this one by Kathleen Parker, and this one by Rod Dreher, both of whom are conservatives who have criticized the McCan't selection of Sarah Palin. Both shared emails they had received, which ranged from the constructively critical to the violently threatening, from readers who did not like that they had strayed from the party line and criticized one of their own. A direct violation of the Eleventh Commandment of Ronald Reagan: Don't speak ill of a fellow Republican. It's the same argument I heard my father make four years ago. To suggest that someone is unpatriotic, or un-American, for going against the party line, is itself unpatriotic and un-American. It insults the intelligence of Americans (which I've suggested many times is downright minimal to begin with) by telling them that it's wrong to think for yourself. That it's your duty as an American, a fellow Christian, or a fellow whatever, to stand behind those who share your views or values and support them without doubt.

That's fine, I guess, if your belief system dictates blind faith. But some Americans, like me, don't subscribe to that point of view. Go back and look up my posts from earlier this summer that criticized Obama for his stance on the FISA legislation, and you'll see that I'm committed to being open-minded.