A Plague on Both Your Houses

I have been a Democrat for the last thirty years.  Before that, I was a Republican.  My family are all Republicans, so I voted for Nixon, to my undying shame.  I was young.  But I also voted for Clinton and Obama, so I think I have earned my Purple Heart of Confusion.  Right now, my wife and I are still registered Democrats, because we we really can't bring ourselves to sign up as Republicans, and Independent seems so wobbly legs and we'd like to vote in somebody's primary.  The problem for both of us is that we are believing Catholics, and were once involved in the Sanctuary movement.  I walked on the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage and demonstrated against nukes at the Bremerton Navy Yard.  I've been to prayer vigils at Trinity Site in New Mexico, demonstrated against the Vietnam War (I was disenchanted with Nixon by that time), and held endless debates with friends and family about the downtrodden and the poor around the world.

But then, the Democratic Party began to change.  Don't get me wrong--I was a great supporter of Liberation movements of all kinds, including Feminism, and for years I ignored the dark underbelly of the very movements that I loved so fiercely.  Abortion was my Waterloo.  I couldn't follow my Party down that path.  I believe in a woman's right to choose, but I also think that we've bent ourselves into pretzels trying to pretend that the baby isn't human.  This, I think, is a very dangerous move.  This country has tried to raise up one group on the backs of another since the Revolution, and each time, we have later regretted it.  When Andrew Jackson tried to support the small farmer, he ended up forcing the Cherokee onto a death march to Oklahoma.  We've supported the southern economy on the backs of African Americans, and built the railroads on the backs of the Chinese.

If we believe in human rights, then those rights have to be extended to everybody, born and unborn, white and black, women and men.  Otherwise, sooner or later, no one will have rights.  So now I am a wanderer, a cafeteria Democrat, picking and choosing my positions with care.  The hardest thing for me is to realize that as a Catholic, my Party doesn't really want my participation.  Anti-Catholicism is now on the menu at Democratic conferences, and the people on the left now see me as a conservative simply because I cannot swallow abortion.  Therefore, my wife and I are dancing between parties, hoping to find a home.