A Letter to a Republican Friend by Ernest Partridge

Is This the Kind of Country That You Want?
A Letter to a Republican Friend

By Ernest Partridge
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
October 14, 2003


Note: While I have many Republican friends, none are named “Whitney.” This letter is for all my Republican friends in general, and none in particular. It is also for all Republicans with whom I am not personally acquainted, who are willing to pause and reflect upon the condition of their party and their country, and then upon their consequent duty as citizens of the United States.



Dear Whitney,

At no time in my memory, or yours, I suspect, has the rivalry between the two major parties been more mean-spirited and poisonous.

And yet, despite our separate party affiliations, we remain close friends as we have for all the decades since high school. Moreover, I see no reason for this to change, nor, I trust, do you..

Surely you know that I have never regarded you as a fascist, just as I know that you have never thought of me as a traitor. Yet these are the kinds of labels that are routinely hurled by one fringe of our respective parties against the other.

Such mutual incivility is more than acutely unpleasant, it strikes at the foundation of our republic. Thus it falls upon cooler heads, such as ourselves, to reject the insult and abuse, and to restore the calm civic dialog and mutual respect that is the foundation of a just and secure political order.

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/republican.htm