I find myself in an interesting position.  Many members of my family assume I am a Democrat because I support President Obama and did not agree with President Bush on a lot of policies.  I see myself as far more conservative, and during the 2008 federal election, I genuinely felt that either candidate would have been a good president. I have a warm nostalgia for Reagan’s “Morning in America” years, and I think even G.H.W. Bush would have done well with a second term.
    I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican.  I am not Libertarian or Green, nor do I affiliate with any other political party.  The economy should be as capitalistic as possible, but it is unwise not to regulate, since corporations are not people and do not have consciences.  The Second Amendment is important and should remain in the constitution, but I think gun advocates tend to overplay their defensive position and fail to support sensible gun laws.  I think anyone who dismisses human impact on global warming takes a negligent and possibly self-contradicting position. I do not agree with gay relationships, but I think that gay spousal rights should be equivalent to heterosexual spouses.  I find the Bible is just as clear about the freedom of a person’s will as it is about murder, and as such we must find better and more cooperative solutions to sway women who would choose abortion without curtailing their rights.  The list goes on, and you cannot slot my positions according to a checkbox on some political form.
    What makes it worse is that the parties are not even historically consistent as being “conservative” and “liberal.”  Our favorite go-to president, Abraham Lincoln, was a Republican voted in by a predominantly pro-federal electorate. The Republican national platform of 1860 opposed “abridging or impairing naturalization laws” and favored giving “full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens.”  The current push for immigration reform aside, this is not a very modern-Republican position.  The South, by contrast, was predominantly Democratic and seceded from the Union on the grounds of state’s rights and preservation of the traditional ways; my old history textbook expressly refers to the Democrats of the time as the conservatives.
    President Monroe had the best break in our nation’s political history.  From 1817 to 1823, he presided over the “Era of Good Feelings,” during which the Federalist party dissolved and there was not much political discord.  Leading up to the 1824 election, the Whigs and Democrats started fussing again, and we ended up with the first contested presidential election needed to be resolved by Congress.
   George Washington said this about political parties in his Farewell Address in 1796:
    “They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of the faction…”
   We revere this man as the founding father of our nation. We passed laws that awarded Washington the highest rank of all generals past and present, a holiday in celebration of his birthday and his face on our $1 bills and quarter coins.  However, we have neglected to seriously consider this piece of his advice.
   I am not red nor blue. I am red, white and blue — an American.  Political parties are and have always proven a bad idea. It’s time to leave them in the past.