The common good does not need us to be somebody’s Republican or Democrat or anyone’s Libertarian or someone’s Green person. This country needs only our loyalty, thoughts and actions to test the circumstances of our resolve to face the new challenge of the day.      

       Our task is not just to meet and overcome the challenge that confronts us but more than this is to mold a national character for the good of the country. That’s how we deserved to be genuinely called real Americans – not just Americans by name that had become our own enemy from within.  I am referring to some Americans that had embarrassed this nation in the eyes of the outside world, who hate America deep down the marrow of their bones.  These are Americans that had won the Vietnam War for the enemy, and are now feverishly campaigning to win the war on terror for the terrorists.

       If the United States is now your own home as an immigrant, it does not even need a citizenship to die in defending this country. 

       Our soldiers in Iraq that are not American citizens who died and those still serving the United States in the Middle East so that the world will be a better place to live in are of this gentry. Not too long ago, they were granted American citizenship while on duty, together with those who died on duty.

       Those were soldier immigrants serving in the United States Armed Forces. Some of them or their forebears might have entered the country illegally – whom politicians, especially diehard Republicans with murder in their mind who are after the heads of more than 11 million illegal aliens in this country -- hated the most.

       Radical Democrats called our soldiers in Iraq America’s “lost command” slaughtering rebels and underground Iraqis and their fighting allied mercenaries from neighboring Islamic Jihad countries at war with America. Angry liberals and the radical left want our soldiers to come home in defeat and hand over victory to terror in Iraq.  They did it once in Vietnam.  Now they are doing it in Iraq.

        It is liberalism extraordinaire that adds ignominy to insult why they are surrendering this country to the enemy.  This is the thinking of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I hope president-elect Barack Obama has the answer to our question why they want us to leave Iraq and let the enemy win. Perhaps this is a protest that has no legs to stand on anymore now that the 2008 election is over.

        The present Democrat congressional leadership that leans to the far left, want our soldiers to fight only a war of their own choosing, not a war that this country decides to fight in defense of freedom and national security. These new brand of liberal politicians now in control define their own freedom. 

        Records show that they have attacked this nation’s national security measures as inimical to their definition of individual freedom. Because President Bush is waging a war against terror in Iraq that they disliked, in their disquieted mind President Bush or any U.S. President that they did not vote to office who leads a war should be impeached.

          Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey, a soldier who died in Iraq a hero, spearheaded a puppet-led vendetta war of the left with anonymous liberal string-pullers behind her, against the President of the United States.  She is drumbeating to the whole world that her son did not die for this country but was “murdered” when President Bush, his son’s Commander-In-Chief, sent him to Iraq to die for Israel. Anyone who reads this may be shocked. But there is always 911 to call, or an ambulance in case of heart attack.

            My unconditional respect of those who died serving this country in peace and in war is clear. I wrote a well-read and favorably endorsed editorial in the Web with a calculated impact on the thinking of American patriots who are always ready to defend and die for this country, entitled You Can Protest The War Until You Turn Blue But Never Slur A Dead Soldier [Link 1]. It was caught by and republished in several websites.

        Becoming a Democrat or a Republican after you take the oath of allegiance as a naturalized American citizen may not be to your own liking.  For example, you may not want to be a Democrat because you dislike what Democrats do, especially if you are caught in a quandary where to stand on the burning issues the war in Iraq presents.

       Recall that Democrats dying to impeach President George W. Bush did not want us to fight this war in Iraq.  All they wanted was for us to fight their war against Bush. They finally succeeded at the expense of Sen. John McCain that the president-elect recently trounced … crushed and swept to the dustbin of history.

       You do not need to be white, black, brown or yellow to be a Democrat or a Republican American.  You can just be a face in the crowd as an American at heart that thinks and acts the American way and that’s all what’s required if you want to live meaningfully as a true American in this country.

       After all what is a political brand – Republican or Democrat -- but just a meaningless name.  It is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans that change our world for better or for worse – it is only the real you and I that can do that on our own choice as our own Republican or Democrat.   

       This has been the crux of my thoughts sometime ago when as Vice Chairman of the Human Relations Commission of Freeport, Illinois I was invited to speak before a group of mixed immigrants whose naturalization applications were about to be approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.  They want an advice as to whether or not they should register as Democrats because they are poor and they were told that the Democratic Party is the political party of the poor. The president-elect confirmed this in his wealth redistribution program that he had visualized for them.

       To me the question is really immaterial and without relevance to the role that a Democrat or a Republican should play in American politics. They could register their names either way and be Republicans if they are Democrats, and be Democrats if they are Republicans if doing that is the answer to the call of the day for the common good 

       But when can we be our own Democrat registered Republican, and vice versa, for the good of the commonweal?  There is no precise answer to this question, but in a democracy like ours, a good example of the commonweal is usually, but not always, the preference or the will of the majority. This has been expressed when Democrat president-elect Sen. Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States.

        If the CNN polls can be relied upon that 63% of the American public supports a constitutional amendment that marriage should only be between a man and a woman and you are a disagreeing liberal Democrat, being an opposing Democrat is not in accord with what is perceived by the majority as the commonweal. In this particular instance, for the commonweal, as a Democrat, you can be your own Republican. This is what happened to California’s Proposition 8 that won in the referendum amending the State Constitution that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Before this, the right to marry anyone, i.e. same sex, your parents or in a certain remote village of India even wed a cow, was not only alarming but also severely troublesome. 

        Democrat Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain are shining examples of their own Republican and Democrat persona, respectively.  The only difference between you and these guys is that they are politicking and you are not, thus unlike yours, their motive is always held suspect. But they are both known to be honest guys … great guys that this writer holds a truckload of respect.

        But this is not without a caveat. One cannot and should not be both a Republican and a Democrat at the same time on the same particular issue.

       For example, a wishy-washy crusader of values cannot be a religious conservative yet would kill a fetus in pregnancy as a matter of right, or a free-willing liberal yet would campaign for the tinkering of Social Security and for tax cuts to satiate the insatiable greed of Wall Street for more money.

        Watch Congress in session and hear where the Ayes and Nays are coming from, and see how sad one side of the session hall is while the other side is in a euphoric standing ovation applauding a winning approval.  This scenario shifts from one side of the session hall to another all the time. That’s because it is representing who and what we are in the dichotomy of life in America. 

        We are in perpetual opposition with one another, in Capitol Hill and elsewhere in real life. Except in the Office of the President, we are all Democrats and Republicans in the Media, in the court of law, and in the halls of Federal and State legislatures where both sides of the aisle are clearly defined as antipodal to what you and I differentially purport to be. 

        In short, you cannot be half bird and half beast on any critical issue that sharply divides this nation into the opposing worlds of the Democrats and the Republicans. America is not a primitive cave for those whose thinking and choices are merely sonar, typical of characters hanging inverted on the edge like those nocturnal stinking bats preying on humans as opportunist vampires that suck the public’s innocence and credulity.  When running for a public office, politicians after your vote are half or less of what they represent they are, when they approach you to help them win the election.

        The following are just a few of many other similar countless examples:

        You cannot be a Republican who hates the government, and yet ask for the protection of the government you hate if you are a traveling American in another country who is in trouble.  Your political brand as a registered Republican will destroy your own self-respect.

       The old adage that angry dogs bite the hand that feed them is not uncommon. Probably you noticed as I do that many liberals and conservatives who attacked each other in a dirty political campaign had lost their self-respect. Devoid of self-esteem, these are what we put in public office to run our lives. You cannot expect more from what they are.   

          If you have this kind of mentality, you must be a dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrat, and need not be your own Republican to hide your revolutionary fervor. However, if you have to conceal your passion as a reactionary liberal because instead you want to be your own Republican, the downside is, you might not be able to know who you are anymore.

           You reap what you sow. Not knowing who you are, is your harvest.

The writer is an award-winning journalist of more than 45 years. A lawyer-journalist-cum economist, Sumcad had served as deputy permanent representative to the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Online publications published his incisive editorials and essays read by multitude of readers nationwide and worldwide. For comments, contact is at ed.superx722@yahoo.com.sg.