OPINION: My Father, the Prophet Ted from Brooklyn

By William Lockard

I’ve been thinking about when my father, a member of the Republican Party since the early 1950’s, resigned from that Party. He told me about what he had done and of course I asked why.

First, some back-story.

My father was a true “Fiscal Conservative”. At the end of the second Clinton term, when there was a budget surplus, he felt we should pay down the national debt. As we know, that didn’t happen. He was also a “social progressive”. His belief was the strength and success of our Nation was the tied to the strength and success of all of the population. He believed in the rights of everyone.

Let me try to explain why.

When World War II started, my father was already in the US Army stationed in the Philippines. He fought on Bataan and was captured. He survived the Bataan Death March and was a POW for almost 3 1/2 years. He was in the group of prisoners who were shipped to Japan to work as slave labor in the copper mines. He was 6 ft. tall and weighed less than 120 lbs when he was liberated.

He saw first hand and lived the day-to-day reality of a militaristic, authoritarian governmental policy of extreme nationalism. He existed at the end of where that road leads. It’s where extremism lives, and hatred rules.

He told me the reason he left the Republican Party was that he had been become alarmed that the Party was starting to embrace the “far-right” in an effort to increase the Party numbers. My father already knew where that would lead.

He told me then, “You watch what happens to the Republican Party.”

This was 1982.

William Lockard, Vietnam Veteran, is happily married and currently a stay-at-home musician living in the mountains of Colorado!

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