Ripple effects
Ideologies’ ramifications last long
Iwholly agree with Mr. Ron West about the definitions of “patriot” and “evangelical.” As one who voted for Donald Trump the first time, I debated this very point until I just gave up. My vote was cast for the Republican ticket solely as an endorsement of political and social/cultural ideology, not of the candidate.
The idea is that ramifications of which ideology prevails in a presidential election far outlive any one candidate. One doesn’t have to go very far back in American history to witness this. If you study much of the contrast between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, then you will see that 1932 was exactly such a contest.
Very generally speaking, I believe it accurate to say that Hoover was of a mind that the federal government should not be in the business of stepping in and absolving private individuals of the negative consequences of their actions that resulted in the Great Crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression. His ideology was of personal responsibility: “You made this mess, now you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and figure out how to fix it.”
Roosevelt, on the other hand, advocated using the full strength and economic power of the federal government to step in and help the people right the ship, as it were. The collective programs he espoused comprised the New Deal that was the main platform of his campaign. We know Roosevelt was overwhelmingly victorious, and now with 90 years of history in the rearview, we can easily see the ramifications of Roosevelt’s ideology.
I think it fair to say that Roosevelt’s victory and resulting ramifications set up the 1964 contest between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson. Again, you had one candidate espousing individual responsibility and less government intervention in people’s lives, while on the other you had Johnson campaigning on his Great Society platform, with all its attendant programs that directly intervened in private lives. And again, we have the history to study and see the ramifications of Johnson’s victory.
Now, whether one thinks of these ramifications positively or negatively is solely dependent on the individual’s personal ideology. We can’t know what America would look like if Hoover and Goldwater had been able to advance their ideology. And yes, I realize I am relating all of this in very general terms, but I am not a political science or sociology or even a psychology major; my only academic claim is a 1979 diploma from Pine Bluff High School, so I know that there are others more capable of explaining this, and I apologize for any misstatements I make out of my ignorance.
At this point, knowing the current mindset of the public at large, I have to insert here that I am not advocating that America would be better off if Hoover and Goldwater would have been victorious. I am not advocating that the civil rights movement or Medicare should never have come to pass. I simply want to make the point (and I hope all could agree) that the ramifications, ripple effects, however you phrase it, of the political ideologies that Roosevelt and Johnson ran their campaigns on far outlasted their tenures as president, as well as their lives on this Earth.
Whether it would have been better or worse for America had Hoover and Goldwater prevailed we obviously can never know. All we know is what is, and, as I stated above, we can only make conjectures about what might have been.
My point is, in the very same way, I cast my vote for the Republican ideology because it more closely correlated to my own. My vote in no way endorsed anything else, no matter what someone else thinks about it. That’s it; it was that simple for me, and I still struggle to understand why this is so hard to explain. If you disagree with my ideology, that’s a right I fully afford you and I applaud you for having the courage to stand for and take action for what you believe in.
Now, if your personal ideology is diametrically opposed to that of a candidate who is a particular political party’s nominee but you cast your vote for that platform … well, now, that would be hard for me to understand.