Whenever I post something critical of Donald Trump, the negative responses are almost always one of two types. One is name-calling, labeling me as a socialist, ultraliberal, or uninformed, out-of-touch elitist. The others assume I am a die-hard Democrat and accuse me of supporting everything they think is wrong with the Democratic Party. I don’t pay any attention to personal attacks by people who don’t know me or anything about me. It’s typically apparent that they don’t know, and don’t want to know, what socialism or liberalism actually means.
However, it may be worth explaining that many of us who voted against Trump and continue to oppose Trump do not support the political agenda or priorities of the Democratic Party. We may support many of the Democrats’ so-called social programs, but many of us feel they should do much more to ensure the equal and unalienable rights of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We feel they have relied too heavily on simply giving people money rather than ensuring that their basic needs are met for food, clothing, housing, health care, education, and other essentials for participating fully in society.
Ensuring the basic needs of all is not socialism. It doesn’t mean everyone has an equal right to everything, only to enough of the things they need to lead a decent and dignified life, to be happy. An equal right or opportunity is meaningless if a person doesn’t have the means or ability to exercise their rights or take advantage of their opportunities. Those denied their basic human needs are denied their equal and unalienable rights to be free to pursue happiness. That is not socialism; that’s the moral foundation of our American democracy.
We may also feel Democrats have done far too little to limit the economic and political power of corporations, to tax money made by having money at a higher rate than money earned by working, to prevent corporations from engaging in political activities, to limit political speech to speaking and writing rather than spending money on deceptive advertising, and to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to vote in elections. The current levels of inequity in income, wealth, and economic opportunity in the United States rip the social fabric that holds the nation together and threaten the future well-being of the rich and poor alike. Democrats, as well as Republicans, have allowed the government to degenerate into a corporatist oligarchy dominated by a handful of billionaires.
We may also disagree with Democratic positions on the globalization of markets. Trade among nations should be mutually beneficial, free trade: respecting the sovereignty of all nations to trade or not trade, without pressure, coercion, or threats. Democratic support of the World Trade Organization and NAFTA was not about “free trade,” but “forced trade”—a means of economic extraction and exploitation. Many of us also disagree with Democrats’ positions on the use of military force, refusing to support torture, ethnic cleansing, genocide, or other internationally recognized war crimes by our armed forces or allies that we support militarily. We also refuse to support wars or threats of war motivated by gaining access to other nations’ natural resources, whether it is oil in Iraq or mineral resources in Ukraine.
We may also disagree with Democrats about ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government bureaucracies. The solution is not more complex regulations and quantifiable metrics of monitoring compliance and performance, but instead individual and organizational commitment to meeting the needs of the people who are to be served by government programs. A better way to improve the efficiency of government bureaucracies might be to reward workers who identify waste and corruption to be eliminated. A better way to determine whether government programs are working effectively might be to ask the people to be served if their needs are being met, including the public in general. The solution is not to run the government like a business or to simply reduce the size of government by randomly firing workers and shutting down programs.
We vote for Democrats, despite our disagreements, because Republican positions on these issues are even worse. We are not going to vote for a party that treats the American Declaration of Independence as a worthless document drafted by idealists of another age and is no longer relevant. We will not vote for a party that ignores the constitutional separation of powers, the responsibilities of Congress, and the fundamental purposes of the government as spelled out in the Constitution of the United States of America. And we certainly were not going to vote for a president who made it crystal clear during his campaign that he had no intention of respecting limitations of the presidency spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, but if elected, intended to rule by decree, as an autocrat, a king, or dictator—not as president.
If these opinions and positions make me a socialist, ultraliberal, or uninformed, out-of-touch elitist in your judgment, so be it. There isn’t much I can do about that. So, I’m not going to worry about it. But if you think all, or even most, the people who voted against Trump agree with all, or even most, the past and present policies of the Democratic party, you are mistaken. Many of us want change as much as those who voted for Trump, we are just not willing to sacrifice our 250-year-old democratic republic to get it. We support a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. If our government is to change, “we the people” must consent to the change, not have it forced upon us.
John Ikerd