Republican Elephant & Democratic Donkey - Icons

(photo: DonkeyHotey/flickr)

Mine is a simple, and very serious, if, perhaps, modest, proposition. But let me stipulate, first, that even though this post is about the Republican Party, it in no way indicates support for, or a positive evaluation of the Democratic Party over the past 35 years. I’ve recorded my opinion of the Democratic Party’s behavior and of the present Administration’s reprehensible performance for years now, and feel no need to repeat my frequent and very angry evaluations in this post.

Having said that, I believe that unlike the often merely perfidious, and feckless, Democrats, the Republicans have crossed a line in politics which places them beyond the pale of legitimacy in any liberal democracy. What they have done is to systematically attack and attempt to destroy the very foundation of liberal democracy, namely the right and capability of the majority of people to replace the leaders of their government when they become dissatisfied with the performance of those leaders. They are attacking the basic right of the people to “kick the ins, out,” when they, individually and collectively, decide that ought to be done.

We are witnessing systematic efforts by the Republican Party across the nation in State legislatures to deny some citizens their civil right to vote because those citizens are perceived as likely to vote for a party other than the Republicans themselves. This is not just a question of playing a hard or unfair game of politics, filled with dishonesty. We’ve come to expect that from both major parties, and sooner or later democracy can cope with that.

But what we do not expect and what no American of whatever party ought to tolerate, is an attempt by any political party to strike at the very foundational principle of liberal democracy by disenfranchising large numbers of citizens who might vote against them. When a political party does that, it prevents democracy from performing its central function which is to replace leaders who will not and have not learned from experience, with other leaders who may do better if they are given a chance. In short, it creates tyranny!

The Republican attempt at restricting the right to vote is disloyal to democracy! It is dictatorship stuff! It is the stuff our founding fathers fought against! It is not American stuff!

It is unacceptable enough that it merits a merciful end for the organization called The Republican Party: for its betrayal of the principle of popular sovereignty; and for its denial of the idea that eventually, at the end of all peaceful disagreements, and civil debates, lengthy considerations, and exercises of minority rights, there must and will be acceptance of majority rule as the final principle sustaining a political system that expects to successfully avoid the extremes of brutal dictatorship and bloody revolution.

The wisdom that real democracy protects us from such extremes has been hard won over many years, and Americans cannot allow it to be betrayed by a political party that, for the sake of short-term political advantage, will undermine the principle on which the whole edifice of democracy is based. So what is to be done to deliver this much-deserved merciful death to a political organization that systematically attempts to overthrow American Democracy?

I think what has to be done is simple. The rank-and-file members of that political party should show that their loyalty to our democratic political system is greater than their loyalty to their party and its leaders, by putting their partisanship aside, and by walking away from their political party en masse and letting it fall of its own weight.

The Democrats cannot do this for the Republican rank-and-file. Their Party is their creation. They keep it alive from election to election. They propel it forward. Now they must be the one to administer the punishment it deserves for stepping over the line of legitimate democratic politics and attempting to subvert the foundation of democracy itself. Remember, one can always organize a new political party from the ashes of the old one. But once democracy is lost, it may be generations or even centuries before it can be restored.

So, on behalf of America, and its proud tradition of self-government, and for the sake of your children and grandchildren who deserve to grow up in a free nation, I appeal to the members of the Republican Party to act now! Walk away in 2012! Destroy your Party, nationwide, for its strike against democracy, by voting against it; before rule of the people, by the people, and for the people, does perish from the earth!

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com.)