Dear GOP: This is why we're calling it quits

I am no liberal. If anything I am one of the staunchest critics of liberal-progressive political theory. I have devoted hours of my time and schooling into pouring over just what makes it such a flimsy ideology, prone to exploitation and contradiction. My skepticism had led me to hold firmly to the Republican Party. This because I recognize that a self-gratifying world of eternally contrived rights will inherently lead to chaos. Because I see that moral ambiguity also leads to political ambiguity and the justification of oppression in the name of order.

There can be no individual truth or liberty if there is not a universal one. The appeal of the Republican Party for years, then, was its hold on the idea of a universal truth. I’m less interested in whether this is based in God, religion, natural law, or even historical precedence. The acceptance of a standard allowed them the freedom to make rational adjustments to policy. It created its own sphere of order not likely to fall into chaos because the ideology works within a framework that accepts morality as a part of political necessity. Should I quote John Adams here?

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

This does not deny pluralism or freedom. Debates about the more prudent or moral of doctrines is acceptable and often encouraged. Because the assumption of this kind of politics is that we are all seeking to find truth, rather than personally defining or dismissing it for ourselves.  That foundation of moral necessity preserved the stability of the party for years.

But this is a year of change. The party has all but nominated as its political leader—its candidate for the highest office to the land—someone who in no way understands even the most basic tenants of that ideology. I’m not sure how a near majority of registered republicans fell into the self-deceptive box of political nationalism and xenophobia, but that is entirely repugnant to the very idea of American democratic-republicanism. It makes no sense to me.

The party that once seemed destined to be the last standard bearer for morality in an increasingly self-interested world just dropped its arms in the embrace of a candidate that betrays the very nature of moral integrity. It’s a betrayal of universal truth. It’s a betrayal of a large segment of the population who have been desperately seeking a champion to the cause of virtue in politics.

So what happens to the moderate conservative? The person who respects religion and standards of truth, but sees no reason for racism or xenophobia? What happens to political idealism? So many of us are moderates in terms of policy. Why can’t we let illegal immigrants vie for citizenship while still securing the border for the future? Why can’t we look for solutions to the crises of millions of refugees while still finding a way to protect the mainland? Why can’t we find ways to implement compassionate conservatism in our calculations of capitalist economic policy? Why can’t we find a leader that embodies a sense of personal integrity and morality who still understands the necessity of solutions and compromise?

Trump has none of these characteristic. He has no personal integrity. 

The blindness of the political elites and establishment politicians who assume that his declarations of compromise and negotiation in the face of his egoism and authoritative precedence will somehow lead to political efficiency is strikingly revealing and depressing. That the Republican Party could takes as its standard bearer someone who represents the very antithesis of all this is moral, honest, and pure about conservative ideology is one of the darkest ironies of the modern political world.

From the perspective of a political theorist who lives to discover new ideologies and fight against limited secular rationalism, the fact that my traditional party has now embraced someone so void of anything virtuous or aligned with its original ideology is an embarrassment to me. How do I explain to my liberal-progressive associates, whom I have criticized for being self-interested, singular-minded, and prone to corruption, why we have nominated an egotistical bigot as our representative?

The only option that any integrity-motivated republican has left is to leave. Quit the party. Find a new one, if you must. But if nothing else, please disassociate yourself from the party of extremism and political intolerance. The party that now accepts hatred, xenophobia, and extremism. For years liberals have wanted to paint us like that. I have fought it on the grounds of moral necessity in politics. I have demonstrated time and again the requirement of universal truth to maintain order.

But Trump has no understanding of either of these foundations. He is quite strikingly bigoted. Combine that with his egoism and lack of personal integrity and you have created a political disaster likely to reveal itself in the form of authoritarianism.

I am no liberal. I support traditional morality. But that can’t preclude personal integrity. The two must go together to avoid the destruction of the ideology. The abandonment of integrity in its configuration of morality has overthrown the Republican Party. The only thing they had going for them was a sense of universal truth that could be discovered through political discussion and an acceptance of metaphysical theory. The moment Mr. Trump accepts the mantle of presidential leadership from the Republican Party is the moment the pure ideology of the party dies. It becomes a contradiction of theory and practice.

Any conservative who wants to maintain their integrity has only one choice:

It’s time to call it quits on the GOP. I think Abraham Lincoln would like the idea. 

Yours Truly,

Sandra