When I taught school, I spent a number of years as the president of the local teachers’ association. We were affiliated with the Illinois Education Association which is a part of the National Education Association. Through the years, the IEA had advocated strongly for teachers, backing candidates who were pro-education and resulting in retirement checks that are sufficient for most retired teachers to live on, albeit carefully if they don’t have a spouse with an income as well. So I have much to thank the IEA for.
But as time has passed, the IEA like the NEA has become increasingly more liberal and strident in their views. Most conservative candidates are sneered at and the organizations back almost entirely Democratic candidates. They donate heavily to Democratic causes and to the Democratic Party with money that comes out of the dues of their members, many of whom, like me, do not share their political views. Oh, you can file paperwork to get the political contribution money back, but it is a nuisance and the money that pays the salaries of office workers and “union reps” does not come out of that political fund, despite the fact that they devote a fair amount of their time to political tasks, so even if you ask for the political contribution back, you are still financially supporting political action.
So for over 40 years I was a member of a group I grew not to believe in and even an officer in the local subsidiary, paying my hard earned money toward causes I did not support. “Why?” you ask. Why was I so stupid, so thoughtless with my money and so careless of my beliefs? Very simply, because it had become habit. I joined the Association of Paris Teachers/IEA/NEA soon after I started teaching in Paris, in large part because they do provide liability insurance and lawyers to help you if parents sue over some perceived mistreatment of their child. And maybe that reason was enough. I became an officer and later president of our local organization because I did not like the way it was being run. Some of the negotiating tactics, for instance, that were encouraged by the IEA were dishonest, and I felt, beneath us as teachers. I negotiated and attended meetings and state-wide conferences over the years, but I never bought in to the IEA/NEA propaganda. I just ignored it.
I know some Democrats who are like that and I suspect there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them. They have always been Democrats. It is what they are. It is habit. And habits are hard to break. Many of them are Christians and pro-life, and they don’t like to see their party work so hard to support abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood or to remove the word “God” from their Party platform, even if they did replace it for fear of losing those same quiet, Christian Democrats. They have been disgusted by the profane comments about the President by some Hollywood characters, and Maxine Waters’ continued calls to impeach the President make them uncomfortable. They were disturbed that the Senate Democrats wouldn’t give Brett Kavanaugh a fair hearing, choosing instead to believe sexual allegations even after the accuser’s own witnesses said they were false. And they cringed when they saw pictures on television of crazed young adults beating upon the doors of the Supreme Court building and clawing at them, trying to open them and disrupt the swearing in of Justice Kavanaugh. They have wondered if Nancy Pelosi really believed the tax cut bill would be Armageddon as they look at their higher take home pay, and they wonder, since we already have fences and barriers up along part of the Mexican/U.S. border what would be so bad about adding more, especially since even the Border Patrol says it would help slow down the traffic of criminals and drugs into our country. They wonder. But they do nothing. Habit.
Except that in the last months of 2018, some of them started thinking that perhaps this was no longer their Democratic Party. Socialism, forcing sex changes onto kindergarten children, woman with penises and all the lies and profanity and hatred spewed towards not only the President, but also all conservatives, many of whom are their friends and neighbors were not things that their Party used to stand for. And so they have left, visibly and vocally joining an online movement called #Walkaway. Have they become independents or Republicans? I don’t know. But they no longer consider themselves Democrats and it is no wonder why.
Despite what the media says, the vast majority of the hatred is flowing from the left towards the conservatives. It is Democrats who are cornering Republicans in restaurants and literally driving them out, and it was Representative Maxine Waters who told them to continue doing so. It was a Democratic actor who dared to scold the Vice-president of the United States during a curtain call after a performance of Hamiltonto which the Vice-president had innocently taken his family. It was the left who first began sending death threats to Senators if they dared confirm Brett Kavanaugh. (The fact that some Democrats have also begun receiving death threats is not surprising, since there are bound to be some on the right who feel that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.) It was not the young Catholic boys from Covington High School, proudly wearing their MAGA hats as they marched in the pro-life parade who cursed at the adult Black-Israelites, but rather the adult Black-Israelites who shouted obscenities at the youngsters who valiantly tried to drown them out by chanting high school sports cheers with the permission of their chaperones. Nor the teenagers who confronted and insulted the Native American, Nathan Phillips, an activist who has a history of making false claims against whites. Instead it was Phillips who marched into their group, pounding his drum and when confronted by a smiling young Nick Sandmann, chose to believe that the young man was disrespecting him. Phillips is a liar, a self-proclaimed Vietnam veteran who never was deployed to Vietnam, and in this situation, video from witnesses showed the innocence of the young Christians, but not until everyone, including their Catholic Diocese had condemned their innocent behavior.
I woke up to the extreme views of the IEA/NEA, but I never disassociated myself with them because I wanted the liability insurance that they provided. I was willing to compromise my beliefs for the benefits of belonging to a national teacher organization (The American Federation of Teachers is no better), and also for the ability to control the direction of our local organization. But what benefits do Democrats get from continuing to vote for Democratic candidates? Minority groups in cities like Detroit and Chicago get nothing. No opportunity to send their children to schools where they might actually learn something. No safe neighborhoods in which to live. No assurance that drugs are not being peddled on their very doorsteps or that their children are not being swept up into gangs before they reach puberty. Of the twenty most dangerous cities in the United States, 19 are headed by a Democratic mayor and in most of them Democrats have controlled city government for decades. Those minority groups are getting nothing from voting Democratic, election after election. Nothing but the same empty promises.
But what about national candidates? What, for example, have Christian or middle of the road Democrats gained by voting for Democratic representatives? Well, they have one freshman representative, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who informed a group of progressives that “we’re gonna impeach the mother f—er” refering, of course, to the President. They also have Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar who has been appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committe even though she is a strict Muslim who is a virulent anti-Semitic. In other words, she hates Jews and would like to see Israel wiped off the map. She once tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world and may Allah awaken the people and help them to see the evil doings of Israel.” This was three days after one of the usual unprovoked rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Hamas, this time 150 rockets had been sent into Israeli towns. Then, of course, we have media darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who seems to have a disconnect between her brain and her mouth. She has made so many blatant errors in her grandiose statements of what should be done in this country that it is hard to see how she was ever elected. She claimed that Israel was occupying Palestine. (It is not.) She claimed that unemployment was so low because so many people were holding down two jobs. (Unemployment is figured by the number of individuals working, NOT the number of jobs that have been filled. In addition, the number of people working two or more jobs has lessened since they have been able to acquire full-time jobs and since their wages have gone up under the current administration.) I could go on, but I don’t want you to fall out of you chairs laughing at her. It would be unseemly.
In addition, Democrats who voted in Democratic representatives to the House have brought on the partial shutdown of the government. President Trump has twice offered a compromise deal that would save DACA participants from possible future deportation in exchange for money to build the wall that Democrats themselves wanted only a few years ago. And twice he has been turned down. This last time was just last week and Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned him down without even reading the deal he was proposing. They require that the President end the shutdown before they will begin to negotiate. We’ve all heard that before. Two boys on a playground with candy bars. The first says, “Want to trade candy bars?” “Yeah,” says the eager second one. “Give me yours and then I will give you mine,” says the first boy. The second boy trustingly hands over his candy and then yells “Hey! Where’s my candy?” as the first boy gleefully runs off with both bars. Are these Democrats playing fair? Are these Democrats working for you? Are you benefitting from having elected them? I don’t think so.
If you are a Democrat from habit, perhaps it is time to rethink that habit. Consider the stumbling economy and the lack of jobs under the past Democratic administration. Think of the nearly two thirds of Americans who felt the country was headed in the wrong direction. Then think of the millions of new jobs that have been created under this administration. Think of your lower taxes. Think of the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that there are not enough workers to fill. Think of the fact that most Americans now feel the country is heading in the right direction.
But what about Climate change, you ask? Didn’t President Trump pull us out of the Paris Climate Accord and didn’t he remove restrictions on coal mines? Yes, but those coal mines have the technology to produce much cleaner coal and despite the fact that we were not in the Paris Accord, the U.S. reduced carbon emissions more than any other country in the world. None of the members of the Paris Accord came close to meeting their stated goals.
What of protections for minority groups like homosexuals? The President has been in office for over two years. He has made no attempt to remove the rights of homosexuals or any other minority. He strongly supports the Constitution and its equal protections for everyone under the law, including Christians, whom many Democrats would like to do away with.
What about his trade tariffs? Well, those have worked surprisingly well. The EU is renegotiating trade agreements with the U.S. In fact, the President of the EU arrived, unannounced in the U.S. to speak to the President almost immediately after the tariffs were announced. Both Mexico and Canada have entered into a new trade agreement with the U.S. which benefits U.S. workers, and recently China announced it would remove some of its tariffs on U.S. goods.
Many believe that you need a Congress of the opposing party to put a check on a president, but in the past administration, President Obama moved the country farther to the left than most people like, going around Congress with unconstitutional executive orders, most of which President Trump has rescinded. This President has no major agenda to “fundamentally transform the country” as President Obama did. His agenda is to do what is best for the American people — especially those average Americans who live in the non-coastal states and are so derided and ignored by the coastal elites. Democrats in national government, sometimes even in your own local governments, are doing you no favors. They only scare you into voting for them and then forget about you until the next election. If you are a Democrat from habit, I hope you see that sometimes habits need to be broken. Vote for a better life for yourself! Break that habit!