Editor,
Growing up, my parents always voted for the Democratic candidate. I remember my father telling me the Democratic Party was for the working people, which my parents were. Both of my parents worked in order to support their large family. Being Roman Catholic, they were generously open to life and had eight children, for which I am forever grateful, given I am the sixth child. I know full well that in most other families I would not be here.
My parents understood the need for social programs to help families make it during difficult times. Things changed in the late '80s and early '90s. My parents started to become concerned when the Democratic Party began forcefully advocating positions contrary to their small-town upbringing and the tenets of their religion.
The Democratic Party had always worked to create social programs to benefit people and had always pushed companies to offer better wages and benefits. However, my parents could not understand why their party began advocating issues such as abortion, homosexuality, transgender issues, heavy-handed government policies - especially in regard to social services - bad directions in education reform and a growing hostility toward religion.
Through conversations with my parents, I learned that they voted for a Republican presidential candidate and other Republican politicians for the first time in their lives in the early '90s. This was a compromise for them.
They knew Republicans favored big business, but they also knew the Republican Party was correct on a number of important issues. It believes the first duty of government is to protect human life - including human life in its early stages of development; it recognizes the union of man and woman as the basic unit and source of society; it is for less government intrusion into family life; it disagrees with forcing kids to learn about homosexual behavior in school; and it has a better understanding of the separation of church and state.
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The government is not supposed to be hostile toward religion, especially given our country's very religious history. The government is simply not allowed to endorse one particular religion. The Democratic Party started to argue that religion was contrary to reason and started pushing for a more atheistic understanding of the separation of church and state.
A few years before my father died, I remember him saying, "The Democratic Party used to be for the people. I don't know what happened." The Democratic Party is killing itself. It is sad, because it used to be the party for the working people.
Benjamin Sanchez
UNM alumnus
