Not your father’s Democratic Party

To the editor:

Changes, always changes. Nothing stays the same.

I was born in 1939 and in my short life span of now 80 years and counting, farming has made the change from horses to mega-tractors. Just to name one, because everything is bigger and better.

Or at least you would think it should be.

When I came into this world, Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office and had been so for some time. On his death, Vice President Harry S. Truman took over in 1945. These two men had held the reins of the office of the president from 1933 to 1953, 20 years.

In our household, since my father had been a machine gunner in WWI and when the rumors of WWII began, he became increasingly worried. And when I was about three months of age, he was taken to Marion to the Veterans Hospital with what they called shell shock. He died there in 1961.

 So Mom had to raise me and my siblings by herself, and she was fond of FDR and HST and spoke of the good things she had seen and heard.

Furthermore, as I got into my teen years I worked for the neighbor just up the road, and since he was a Democrat and a Commissioner of North Jay County, I heard a lot of Democratic things. And pondered on them.

I graduated high school and joined the Navy and took the pledge to defend the Constitution, the president, this country, and to give my life if necessary to do so.

I found the military to be, well, military. 

And we were not there to be political. We were to defend Republicans and Democrats alike because we were the property of the United States government. Enough said.

Needless to say, when I became old enough to vote, I chose John F. Kennedy and was very sad when he was killed.

When I came home from the Navy, I found work at Marion’s Fisher Body plant and joined the UAW, of which I am still a member. 

But over time I began to see that what the UAW — which is very Democratic — said and did was bordering on some of the very things the military had told me to defend against.

I know that some of you will take offense at this, but I also was to defend your right to speak your mind so that I may also.

And it was all these things and the things that were happening around me that brought me to the decision to change from a Democrat to a Republican.

When asked why he left the Democratic Party, Ronald Reagan said something like this: I did not leave the Democrat Party, the Democratic Party left me.

The Democrats in Washington are much different from the Democrats in Jay County.

Max E. Blowers

Rural Bryant