Disunion and chaos are not the way to a healthy democracy or a strong U.S. future

Like many Kentuckians, I have been both a Democrat and a Republican in my lifetime. As a native of Pike County in Eastern Kentucky, I was raised in a family of Democrats that over time started voting Republican, particularly in federal elections. Some of us eventually became Republicans while others changed voting habits, if not party registration.

As a political professional, I have worked in state and local government and have helped to run dozens of campaigns at all levels. Over the years, I have lost faith at times in certain politicians, but never in the institutions themselves. The sinews of our democracy are held together by a common understanding that no matter how hard we fight our political battles, in the end, we respect the democratic processes to which we must be bound. This means that we acknowledge and accept the validity of our elections as well as laws passed by our legislative bodies and opinions rendered by our judiciary. If we do not, there is no basis for the “law and order” so common in our political rhetoric.

Our politics are brutal, savage, and unyielding at this moment in our history. Kentucky’s greatest statesman, Henry Clay, the “Great Compromiser,” would be branded today as a RINO if he were a Republican or as a wolf in sheep’s clothes if he were a Democrat by bloodthirsty mobs on both sides of the aisle. Clay would not be able to pass the ideological purity tests imposed by the prevailing groupthink on the left or right.

The truth is that all of us, as merely citizens who vote or as more active participants in the grand game of politics, have at times wound up regretting certain things we have said or done or even candidates we have supported. As it is written in the Book of Romans: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” That has certainly been my experience, but we live and learn, and life goes on.

To my fellow Republicans, I remind you that the next election is less than two years away. Channel your angst into 2022 and 2024. Do not by buy into silly Internet conspiracy theories and do not listen to false prophets of Armageddon, or to those who seek further needless division. Let us remember that we are about more than individual personalities, and that we stand for bedrock principles of liberty and conservatism.

To my Democratic friends, remember that while you despise the man who left the White House on Jan. 20, your neighbor likely voted for him, and millions of Americans believe in much of what his administration was able to accomplish. Let him go, and start talking less about him and more about how your party believes it can uplift people.

In his second inaugural address, delivered just 41 days before his assassination, and after four dark years of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln found it within himself to conjure up the admonition that Americans strive “with malice toward none with charity for all...to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

If Lincoln could summon that kind of magnanimity in 1865, surely it is possible from our leaders in 2021. My prayer for our nation is that it is within stout hearts to again find that kind of goodwill.

Disunion and chaos are not the paths forward to a healthy democracy or a strong American future. We owe something better to generations yet to come and we owe a greater debt to those whose blood was shed to keep our nation intact for the last 247 years. The path forward must be lit by a bipartisan coalition of leaders who share certain fundamental qualities: accountability, decency, integrity, and seriousness.

T. J. Litafik is owner of Solon Strategies, LLC, a Lexington-based political strategy and government affairs firm.