RFK Jr and I saw the light about the Democratic Party. Why this could be a hinge moment for America
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr) has done the unthinkable. He has spoken a powerful truth about the Democratic Party that has been heard around the world.
Truth comes with costs. Not only did RFK, Jr defy the Democratic Party leadership by launching an independent campaign for the presidency, but he has also committed the unforgivable sin of endorsing Donald J. Trump. What he has done requires great courage and fortitude. He has become one of the profiles in courage that his late Uncle John F. Kennedy wrote about all those years ago in 1955.
Let me wax nostalgic for a moment. As children of the 1960s, both Kennedy and I share a lot in common. We are baby boomers whose 1954 birthdates are less than two months apart. Our age was the age of political protest, civil rights, and patriotism.
RFK JR RESPONDS TO DRAMA WITHIN KENNEDY FAMILY, WIFE'S DISCOMFORT AFTER TRUMP ENDORSEMENT
We both had front row seats to the birth of social movements that empowered women, gays, blacks, and environmentalists. We witnessed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1960), Malcom X (1965), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 1968) and Robert F. Kennedy, SR (June 1968). Although the assassinations left us stunned, we grew up at a time when it was common for children to believe that we lived in the greatest country on earth and that being an American was something special to cherish.
Most significantly, we both grew up in an era that had us wanting to serve our nation. Many of us remember that powerful line from his late uncle’s presidential address: "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." Those words meant something powerful for the generation old enough to reflect on the meaning of the words.
As RFK Jr pointed out in his speech announcing he was suspending his campaign, the national Democratic Party of the 1960s were perceived as being "champions of the Constitution and civil rights." Kennedy said:
The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, against imperialism, and against unjust wars. We were the party of labor, of the working class.
TAMMY BRUCE: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE KENNEDYS WHO TURNED ON RFK JR
However, today’s Democratic Party is unrecognizable. It has rejected everything that made America great in the world. It has turned against the competitive election of candidates who compete and debate each other for its presidential nomination. Instead, it now installs hand-picked candidates that the media anoints.
While it decries racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and other great evils, the Democrat Party has a pattern of using members of identity groups to help it advance its own goals even though those goals are often against the best interests of the American people, including members of the identity groups it purports to represent. Democrats today are the party of elitism, wealth, big money, big pharma, and judicial activism that uses lawfare to punish its political opponents, even if this means passing laws to invent crimes that were not recognized as crimes until the party perceives an interest in taking down an opponent.
According to Kennedy, what alarms him most is the Party’s "resort to censorship, media control, and weaponization of federal agencies. When a U.S. president colludes with, or outright coerces, media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression. And that’s the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest."
Indeed, propaganda and control of the media have robbed Americans of open and honest debate associated with free societies. As evil as that is, it gets even worse.
The Democrats have a plan for destroying the U.S. Supreme Court’s autonomy by stacking the courts with liberal justices expected to render decisions long sought by progressive who would like to turn America into a socialist nation. To get the simple majority needed to change the size of the court, the Democrats are willing to promise the moon. Americans who are struggling are being enticed with promises of "free" to solve their problems: free housing, free healthcare, free education, free transportation, pretty much anything they desire. Of course, if this were to happen, America would go the way of Venezuela, Cuba, and other failed national experiments.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
I left the Democratic Party in the early 2000s and like RFK Jr, I became an independent until 2009. As it has for RFK Jr recently, it dawned on me many years ago that the Democratic Party wasn’t truly for freedom. That spurred my evolution. (You can read about my journey in my free e-book, "From Democrat to Republican: A Southern Black Woman’s Journey to Freedom," available through Be the People News.. I wrote "being black, Christian, and Democrat was as natural as breathing for me."
My journey away from the Democratic Party came in stages and was closely related to the Christian conversion experience I had in the late 1990s. Coming into Christianity marked a natural progression that took me from Democrat, to independent, to Republican.
As part of this journey, I earned political appointments from both George W. Bush and Barack Obama during my time as an independent, and later as a Republican from President Trump to his short-lived 1776 Commission where I served as vice-chair for less than a month.
Today, as a conservative Christian, I applaud and welcome RFK Jr to whatever role God has for him.
If President Trump is reelected, Kennedy might have an opportunity use his knowledge and experience to bring badly needed reform to healthcare during the next Republican administration. Whatever RFK Jr’s future, we should be grateful that there are a few Democrats remaining with the integrity, foresight, and knowledge to stand up and hold their party accountable.