Thinking along party lines

This is an opinion article.

An important aspect of life to live by is to understand the fact that truth should never be reached by consensus. Just because everyone agrees on something, does not mean that it is true.

People once believed that the earth was flat, despite the fact that this is not true. All men are created equal, however, there was a time that not everyone held this as true.

An unfortunate quality of humanity is that we tend to be reactionary.  When we disagree with a premise, there is a tendency to go to the polarized extreme. Such decision-making ultimately causes division. This brings me to the heart of the issue.

We exist in a country that is divided upon party lines. My people stand for these values and yours stand for these. There is a tendency to align oneself with a particular group of people rather than at a decision reached through critical thinking. As social beings, we naturally tend to follow the bandwagon and agree with those that we already have a bias towards. Hence the famous danger of the “echo chamber.” We group ourselves with people much like ourselves, which can be positive, but it also means that we are less likely to come into contact with foreign ideas.

True democracy would see free-thinking and educated individuals voting on the candidates of their choosing. However, it often seems to me that we are simply voting for one party and one goal. This is especially the case with straight-ticket voting in Alabama. Nevermind the intricacies of the candidates, they wear the name of a certain party on them and are immediately discredited. What if an individual sees themselves as more of a moderate in a world of extremes? If they ever want a chance of winning office then they best surrender to one side.

A truly free individual is not just one with the right to vote, but one who engages in that activity with a sense of responsibility and seeks to vote for the candidates that properly represent their interests and not a party. We need to stop thinking along party lines and giving lobbying groups all the power. Instead, we should vote along the aisles of truth.