Ernest Patridge writes an open letter to his Republican friends

Excerpted from the letter:


Our respective political differences manifest more than contrasting political philosophies. These differences issue from contrasting professional perspectives, career commitments, family backgrounds, social contacts, and even religious commitments.

I chose an academic career. You opted to join your father’s small manufacturing enterprise. So we encountered government differently. The taxpayers furnished my salary, while government imposed environmental and work safety regulations on your company.

I joined the California Teachers Association – a union. You were management, at the other side of the bargaining table.

In my professional life, I had the privilege of teaching foreign students, corresponding with scholars abroad, and frequently traveling overseas to international conferences. You had to deal with the problem of competition with foreign goods.

[Yet] an authentic conservative and a liberal can hold a great deal in common.

For example:

We both revere our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Along with the founders of our republic, we share a suspicion of “big government” and thus endorse the protection of our “inalienable rights” as articulated in the Bill of Rights.

We both believe that our elected leaders have a bond of honor to the citizens which requires that these leaders deal candidly, openly and honestly with the people.

We both prize freedom, though you are more inclined to interpret freedom in economic terms, while my attention is directed to freedom of inquiry and expression.

With Jefferson, we both believe that a free press and the open competition of ideas is the life blood of a democracy.

With Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Monroe, we eschew “foreign entanglements” and disavow any imperial ambitions for our country.

Despite our religious differences, we both endorse the “traditional values” that are taught by all the great world religions: tolerance, mercy, charity, compassion, moderation, peacemaking.

We both reject sudden social change through violence or the radical imposition of alien ideologies.

The differences between “conservatism” and “liberalism” are grounded in perspective and in emphases – again, not necessarily in conflict.

What deserves most to be preserved from the past, and improved in the future? In the specific answer to these questions reside the divergences of our political opinions. But in the general content of these received principles and future aspirations, we are united. It is that concurrence which has bound our nation together.

Until now.

For now I must urge you to look directly and soberly upon your Party. Does this organization embody your conservative convictions? Do those public figures who so readily describe themselves as “conservative” authentically fit that label? Where your Party is leading our country, do you truly wish to follow?

I refuse to describe the ideology and policies of the controlling faction of your party as “conservative.” Far better to describe it as “right-wing” or “radical right.”

Of course, there are among your fellow Republicans, individuals who would respond, “spare me all this ideological Choctaw. My politics is guided by my self-interest, and it is clear to me that Republican policies are best for my investments, my business, and my personal prosperity.”

However, on close examination, even the appeal to self-interest fails the radical right. Be honest, now: would you trade your investment portfolio today with the one you had when Bill Clinton left office? Don’t you feel at least a little anxious about the direction of the Bush economy – with ever increasing unemployment, ever-decreasing consumer confidence and disposable income, interest in the national debt soon to become the largest item in the federal budget, and half of that national debt owed to foreign creditors? In point of fact, throughout the twentieth century, the stock market has performed better under Democratic presidents and congresses. History confirms Harry Truman’s observation, “to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat”.

In sum, a gang of radical dogmatists have captured the Republican party. Consequently,

* This is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln who urged “malice toward none and charity for all.”

* This is no longer the party of Theodore Roosevelt, who waged political war against the “malefactors of great wealth."

* This is no longer the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower who warned us of the “military-industrial complex” and who lamented that "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. “

Face it, my friend: your party has deserted you and your fellow moderates. All worthy content has been drained from this party, and all that remains is the empty shell with the name, “Republican,” and the false attribution of the word “conservative.”

When I reflect upon the political landscape today, and upon the dilemma faced by moderate Republicans such as yourself, I am reminded of the closing scene in the magnificent war drama, “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness), the commander of the British prisoners of war, becomes so personally invested in the project of building the bridge, that he forgets that he is assisting the enemy. Seeing the explosive charges set by the Allied saboteurs to destroy the bridge, he rushes down to the river to save the bridge but, upon encountering the British and American commandos, is suddenly shocked into a recognition of his authentic loyalties and duties. “My God,” he says, “what have I done?”

So, in closing, I must ask you: Wherein is your ultimate loyalty? To your party or to your country? If you reflect soberly on what has become of your party, on the full import of the crisis facing our country, and upon you duty as a conservative and as a patriot, I am confident that you will arrive at wise and just conclusion.


And he did not say...

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.