I am utterly revolted. Last week I watched JD Vance viciously berate an American ally pleading for security against one of our country’s greatest enemies and felt overwhelmingly numb. Had my eyes and ears deceived me? How could the two most powerful men in the world, men whose jobs were designed to promote our founding principles rooted in freedom, so callously publicly humiliate a man trying to protect his people? Men who, to my eternal shame, I had once believed in.
Until 2021, I was the most conservative person I knew. I was the president of my undergraduate university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, I could recite entire chapters of Friedman and Sowell, and I listened to hours of conservative podcasts daily. I remember how honored I felt getting to meet Rand Paul after volunteering at a campaign event, and how excited I was at the chance to write for conservative outlets. I believed in the message. Yes, I was raised in an evangelical culture, but I genuinely thought that I was on the right side of history. I believed conservatism offered practical steps to a better world for everyone, and that the Republican party was the modern champion of liberty. All I wanted was to make the world more prosperous and free, and everything I consumed affirmed these preconceived notions.
And then one day I left. I traveled abroad, I went to law school, and I was challenged by brilliant people with perspectives I had never sufficiently considered. I walked away from the bubble I had always known and was left shaken. The identity crisis to follow took years to process as I painfully unraveled decades of half-truths and misinformation. Throughout it all, I still wanted to believe that some in the Republican party were honest, that some of them truly did care beyond an insatiable lust for control. Just one would be enough.
Last week, that illusion came crashing down. President Zelensky was shouted down for five minutes after having the gall to point out the obvious fact that Putin does not tend to abide by peace agreements, and any deal requires trustworthy security guarantees. How dare he stand up for his people? How dare he expect us to abide by our promises? How dare he imagine the leader of the free world would send military equipment already meant to be replaced as aid in the fight against one of the most ruthless despots this millennia?
In some sort of horribly twisted joke, every politician that I once respected immediately leaped to propaganda straight from Putin’s mouth. “Zelensky has never said thank you,” “Zelensky said most of the aid went missing,” “Zelensky and his wife have bought luxury houses and sportscars with American tax dollars,” “Ukraine is reselling our weapons in black markets across the world, including to Mexican cartels,” “The invasion was a justifiable response to NATO expansion.” These are demonstrable lies, every single one, and verifiably so. There is no debate, there is no whataboutism; every single one of those statements is a lie. Nevertheless, we have mainstream politicians and pundits who continue to asseverate the same propaganda in defense of a bloodthirsty warmonger whose armies hunt civilians for sport. The party of freethinkers only ever suckling ideas top-down. Now, our President dreams of his own gold statues in an ethnically cleansed Gaza and jailing protestors while tariffing our allies to oblivion, while at the same is lifting sanctions and offensive cyberoperations against Russia. We have state lawmakers trying to ban vaccines, reverse marriage equality, mandate biblical teaching in school, and make Trump’s birthday a national holiday. All this without a single Republican standing up; filthy traitors.
I was lied to. Everything that I believed was a lie, and I was used during all that time wasted promoting conservative ideals as a vehicle for authoritarianism. Now, I want to urge every Republican, or even everyone who considers themselves right-of-center, to please reevaluate if you truly are standing by your principles, or if you are just standing in line. The left is not a monolith of feral college-aged protestors, nor of indoctrinated communists hellbent on achieving utopia. As we watch current events unfold and our president continue to grovel in Putin’s wake, please reconsider which side truly stands for freedom, and which side stands for power.
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