indepublica

I am an Independent. I observe the world around me and recognize a complexity that is too great to be represented in just two colors. I hold that any system which effectively bars non-affiliated candidates from its political process can not rightly be called democratic and is not only unfair, but unwise. A robust and representative government is one in which candidates compete unfettered by party affiliation, where ideas compete on the basis of their merits and not their party of origin. True democracy elevates the strongest candidates without extorting political loyalties.

Just as absolute team loyalty has a way of breaking a society down, lowering its collective capacity for reason and objectivity, so too does independence lift a society to a vantage where truth can more easily be told from fiction. Allegiance to party too often yields the elevation of a team over the progress of a nation. It shuts our eyes to our common dreams, replacing reason with slogan and intellectual inquiry with pre-chewed soundbite. It divides our country along superficial and often fictitious lines. If we the public were to declare ourselves independent of team politics, the political class would have no choice but to lay down their partisan colors and approach the people with sound reason in place of rhetoric. If we are an independent people, let us demand independence of our system and of our representatives. If we are truly independent, let us work toward an electoral system that values ideas over affiliations and treats all citizens, and all votes equally.