The Problem with Being an Independent

It seems that for several years now, there's been a trend of people declaring themselves independents.  The main goal of these people seems to be to make it clear that they've moved on past politics and that they aren't going to vote along party lines.  However, there's a problem with this.  Although many independents are smart, well meaning people, many use being an independent as an excuse to be uninformed.  Or worse, they try to call everything even no matter what, as if that will somehow show that they are above the fray.

It's fine to say that you're an independent, but you should have some idea of what your voting for.  By this, I mean you should have some notion of what is good and what is bad.  Whether or not you apply these ideas to a political party is a separate issue, but you should still have them.  Of course, you could always assume a political party outside the major two (if you still consider democrats and republican all that different), but that won't serve you much good at elections unfortunately.

The main problem I see with independents, is not that they don't support one party or another, it's that they don't oppose bad principles.  I strain myself not to simply come out and say that all independents should be anti-republican, for there are some decent republicans (I agree with some ideas from Ron Paul and John Stossel for example, two libertarians in the Republican party).  However, republicans haven't changed much since Reagan, and their policies have certainly not favored the majority of Americans.  At this point, it is completely undeniable that Republicans exist to serve the rich.  Not only has Mitt Romney admitted that his main goal is to assist the "job creators" (which is a code word for the rich and multi-national corporations, whether or not they actually create jobs in America), but the chairman of the House Banking Committee Spencer Bachus just flat out admitted that he believes "the government exists to serve the banks".  So this is undeniable.

So how can a supposed independent vote for these types of republicans?  Not to say that there aren't bad democrats, let's be honest, the whole system is bought.  But anyone who's paying attention knows who's not on their side.  Everyone must use an independent perspective to make their decision, i.e. they must not be biased, but once a pattern emerges, there's no reason why an independent can't decide not to vote for one party because of policies.  In other words, the political spectrum can shift--in fact, it's moved quite to the right over the years--but an independents ideals don't have to shift along the spectrum.

The problem with being an independent, is that it's too easy to simply say, "I'm an independent," and then use that as an excuse to make an uninformed vote.  The equivocation from politicians can be quite convincing to someone who doesn't know better, and I've seen a disturbing trend of far too many so called independents not knowing better.  The problem really is independents being independent for the sake of being independent.  If they ever took the time to study politics, a majority of Americans, and a majority of independents, would find that they are progressive (at least according to numerous polls) and the democrats at least claim to be progressive, as opposed to the openly regressive republicans.  Yet, I hear many independents, when presented with the facts, reveal that they fall in line with democrat's ideals, and then declare that they are independent.  Why?  Being independent gives you no brownie points, it doesn't make you a more informed voter, so why the stubbornness?  I am not a republican or a democrat, I am a progressive, but I realize that the only way to even try get any progressive policies in America right now is to vote for democrats, and at the very least, it will stall regressive policies.  At least until the system is changed.