The fourth member of his family to seek the White House’s helm, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. grows more popular with each passing day. If polls can even be trusted, Politico has RFK, Jr. pulling 22 percent in a hypothetical three-way race with Biden and Trump.
In October of this year, Kennedy claimed his independence from the two-party system that has a death grip on American politics and encouraged citizens to join him, saying that he is “free of partisan allegiance and backroom deals — a servant only to my conscience, to my creator, and to you.” This independence from the two-party duopoly is a stance that should be mimicked and admired, despite what opinions one holds about Kennedy.
In fact, Kennedy’s choice to divorce himself from the vice of party politics is right in step with what George Washington, thus far the only successful independent presidential candidate, believed was the right path for America. Washington admonished Americans more than 227 years ago to avoid political parties like head lice — but in more diplomatic terms, of course.
In his September 17, 1796 Farewell Address, Washington noted, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
John Adams had a similar diagnosis of the problem with parties: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
This subversion of our constitutional republic, as Washington and Adams correctly observed, has occurred in large part due to the lack of involvement by citizens. Most Americans blindly place their trust in a group of corrupt politicians that assign an “R” or “D” behind their name on a ballot without critically assessing a candidate’s individual worldview, policies, or commitment to the U.S. Constitution.
As a result, American elections now resemble sports. Each team has a fan base, and when the elections roll around, everyone wears team colors and tailgates while watching CNN or Fox News, hoping to see their preferred team dominate the map and bring home a win.
This political “group think” has been a cancer to our country and is a deviation from what the Founding Fathers intended.
RFK’s mainstream Independent candidacy is causing people to listen to his words, hear his positions, and analyze him as a candidate rather than assuming that he upholds a party platform.
With this independence from political parties, Kennedy attacks the regulatory agencies, the military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Tech, and all the other “bigs” that often back the corrupt Left and Right.
Kennedy has accurately assessed that the United States has been violated by the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power” and has vowed to break down that abusive relationship, something only an independent thinker free from the shackles of partisanship could do.
After announcing his run for president as an Independent, Kennedy immediately followed it up with “A new Declaration of Independence for our entire nation,” saying, “We declare independence from the corporations that have hijacked our government. We declare independence from Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag, the military contractors, and their lobbyists. We declare independence from the mercenary media that fortifies corporate orthodoxies, and urges us to hate our neighbors and fear our friends. We declare independence from the cynical elites who betray our hope and amplify our divisions. And finally, we declare independence from the two political parties and the corrupt interests that dominate them, and the entire rigged system of rancor and rage, corruption and lies, that has turned government officials into indentured servants of their corporate bosses. We declare our independence from these corrupting powers because they are incompatible with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our original Declaration of Independence invoked in 1776.”
Of course, Kennedy is hardly a bastion of constitutional conservatism, as he is a progressive who advocates for policies that blatantly overreach the Constitution’s enumerated powers. For example, on the issue of higher education, Kennedy’s website states that his administration would “abolish interest on student loans,” adding that “since the interest would be cut to zero retroactively, millions of borrowers would be immediately debt-free.”
Additionally, Kennedy has called for “targeted community repair” and stated that “we must set federal dollars aside to rebuild Black infrastructure.” These policies resemble a socialistic perspective more than a constitutional and conservative worldview.
Despite this, his candidacy serves as a great opportunity to examine what our politics could look like if we cut the cord from our two-party duopoly.
Whether you agree with RFK, Jr. or not, every patriot who yearns for the return of America to her truest, most exceptional form must come to realize that the endless back-and-forth of party politics is ultimately not in the best interest of the United States.
The current political system has been skewed so that only a mainstream party candidate has a chance of winning; but the ideal system, according to our Founding Fathers, is to have independent, free candidates.
Ultimately, moral, virtuous, and educated citizens must critically think, pray, and vote. Elected officials need to be held to the standard of the U.S. Constitution and the principles that underlie it, not just a party platform.
