A Response.

My friend, responding to my Friday the 13th comment challenged me saying that my "espousing the need for civility in one breath and then race bating and name calling in the next" was hollow commentary.

Well, I answered that I had intended merely to identify policies and ideological positions in the political arena that I find generally detestable on the present Right. I guess that I do regret having to call the proponents "Republicans."

To clarify, I reject levels of civility that constrain responses from the Democrat Party to what I have described. On the other side, the diversity within the Democrat Party fosters elements of selfishness similar to what I decried in the Republican Party and which work to destroy opportunity for the common good. As with the Right, some of the entrenched political, social and ideological cliques on the Left, though without power to control the nation, seek their own estates no matter the costs to the common good.

After receiving over the last two years blatantly racist jokes, cartoons and commentaries from many sources who each cloak themselves in conservative Republican association and observing the "birthers" driven by antagonistic disbelief that any man of mixed racial blood could be President, I conclude that racist beliefs form a portion of what has stimulated the Republican Party. I do not insinuate. I accuse.

Dear Rep. Cantor

I strongly oppose the attacks on the environment included in the amendments to H.R. 1 and I urgently ask that you stop reversing progress and that you work to reasoned compromises.

The Republican Party has shown itself to be a far greater threat to American democracy than the Communist Party of the United States ever was in this country. Your personal, ideological hypocrisy, baseless hyperbole and indifference to the best interests of ALL Americans is shameful at best. As a Virginia Representative, you above most, should act with statesman like qualities transcending party interests.

As a decorated combat veteran, long time Virginia citizen and a West Point graduate, I have an investment in this country and the Commonwealth. The ideological extremes of either political party repulse me. The Republican Party has shown itself, however, willing to sacrifice the best interests of the vast majority of Americans for the benefit of the few.

Herodotus wrote of the values of democracy but warned how a few could readily deceive the citizens into acting against their own best interest. The onslaughts, directly and indirectly, by you and your party on this administration, an administration that I did not support, from the very beginning have created and promoted that deception. You are now in a position to rectify this situation. Bring your party to negotiate and compromise in the crucible of the political system and your party will gain more for their political success and more for America. You owe America that change. I am available for further discussion at your convenience.

A Shifting Independent

A year ago I was comfortable as a life-long Independent with a mix of leftist tendencies and conservative beliefs. The strident and often baseless attacks on a sitting President from the conservative right have stimulated me in his defense and moved me further to the left in substance and, assuredly, in appearance in my writings. As I sit here now, and unless I see some major shift in the rhetoric and adjustments in the asserted policies of the Republican Party, I feel compelled to do everything that I can to see that no Republican is elected to any office in my state or our country. Since I have no clout in or out of politics in Virginia this too, regrettably, is a baseless though strongly felt assertion.

Now, when every relatively minor political or economic event is spun, magnified and mixed with baseless assertions attacking every effort of the President, the result is destructive to the fabric of our democracy. Those looking for real threats from within our country needn't conjure up false labels for the President. They need merely to listen to the devaluation by the conservative right of our national and international strength.