What does a belief in any of the following have in common with the others?

YN Play City, creative commons

• Low taxes for all
• Support of the second amendment
• Less regulation of the free market
• Increased military spending
• Pro-life
• Against gay marriage

The answer to that question is that all of the above are beliefs of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party almost always assumes the opposite of these positions. The next question we must ask, however, is this: what do these sets of views actually have in common?

At first, we may be tempted to answer that Republicans are traditionally in favor of a smaller federal government and Democrats, in favor of a larger one. If we stop to look at the list above, however, we see this isn’t the case. Greater military spending, legislating against gay marriage and legislating against abortion are all acts of a larger government.

Another argument one could make is that Republicans are traditionalists while Democrats are progressives. This argument also falls apart when we examine it further. The Republican Party was founded as the party of civil rights. It came to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln as president and his subsequent issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In the late 19th and early 20th century, by contrast, the Democratic Party believed in a limited federal government and states’ rights, a position they certainly have shifted away from in this century.

If the two explanations used most commonly in tying the beliefs of either party together appear to have fallen apart, what are we left with? We are left with two political parties that have linked groups of beliefs that in fact have no connection to one another, thus in no way promoting independent thinking and, according to some, even discouraging it. In what way does my stance on taxes impact my thoughts on abortion? Quite simply it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t.

Say we have someone who believes that those making more than $1 million a year should pay a higher tax rate on every dollar they earn over that $1 million. That person also supports the second amendment, more military spending, less regulation of the free market, a woman’s right to choose and a homosexual couple’s right to marry. In what political party would you classify that individual? For the six issues in question, some of the biggest issues of recent elections, the individual is in agreement with each party on three topics. This is not an uncommon phenomenon among American voters. Yet we often feel the need to put ourselves in a box based on just one of these issues. We have become so dependent on the “party line” that we have forgotten what it means to think independently.

Independent thinkers founded this country. Men and women came to the shores of this nation with the belief that they could succeed where others had failed. They came here willing to examine all sides of an issue instead of assuming one belief dictated every other.

We have grown into a country of lazy thinkers. A group of people who would rather vote according to our agreement with the GOP on low taxes or with the Democrats on restricting the second amendment than consider all the other aspects of our lives.

We have become a nation of people so reliant on our political affiliations that we refuse to think for ourselves, refuse to acknowledge the problems that have sprung up across the country. A nation ranking 32nd in the world in science and 17th in reading, ranking 37th at taking care of its people’s medical needs and ranking just 18th in gross national income per capita. I would love to tell you this is the greatest nation in the world, that we don’t have a problem when it comes to how the voters in this country act, but I would be lying. Those numbers don’t show the greatest nation in the world. They show a nation that has become lazy, complacent, and dismissive of its faults. They show a nation that is in trouble not because it is too progressive or too traditional, but because it has abandoned the very principle of independence it was founded upon.

It is time we stopped believing everything the news tells us. When will you and I stop assuming that our belief in lower taxes implies that we also believe in more military spending simply because someone else told us that this is how it should be? We must stop allowing the D or R on our voter registration cards to dictate our opinions on key issues. It is time we stopped talking about the principals of our founding fathers and started trying to be more like the men themselves.