The Brutal Truth

Author — and registered, voting Democrat — Orson Scott Card writes in today’s OpinionJournal:

Am I saying that critics of the war aren’t patriotic?

Not at all–I’m a critic of some aspects of the war. What I’m saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party’s political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they “support our troops” all they like–but it doesn’t change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Think what it will mean if we elect a Democratic candidate who has committed himself to an antiwar posture in order to get his party’s nomination.

Our enemies will be certain that they are winning the war on the battleground that matters–American public opinion. So they will continue to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can, because it works.

I’ve said here time and again that this country can’t survive without two, strong political parties. But then I read things like this and wonder if that’s true, so long as one of the two parties is today’s national Democrats.