The Democratic Party has embraced an ideology of pure destruction. It is anti-cop and pro-criminal, anti-American and pro-Marxist, opposed to diversity of thought and supportive of blind conformity, anti-freedom and pro-authoritarian. It has become a party incapable of achieving progress, but perfectly suited to creating a dystopia. 

Until recently, I had spent my entire life as a proud Democrat. Today, while I still hold out hope for the future of my party, I find it difficult to muster much pride in that association. 

During the opening night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which featured a parade of extremists and narcissists interspersed with campaign videos intended to visually emphasize the party’s motivating principles, the American public got a taste of just how out-of-touch today’s Democrats have become. 

We saw and heard plenty about “Black Lives Matter” — Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser even gave her speech with “Black Lives Matter Plaza” as her backdrop. As if that stunning visual reminder of the unrest that has gripped our nation’s cities wasn’t enough, Bowser used her time to issue veiled threats and criticize President Trump’s faith and patriotism. 

“While we were peacefully protesting, Donald Trump…stood in front of one of our most treasured houses of worship and held the Bible for a photo op,” Bowser recounted, sounding positively horrified that the president of the United States would seek to use faith to unite the American people during a time of upheaval. Bowser also neglected to mention that the church President Trump visited had literally been set on fire by the very same “peaceful protesters” she sought to lionize. 

As a lifelong Democrat, Bowser’s words made me deeply uncomfortable. I’m old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter was the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party — a time when faith wasn’t just accepted by mainstream Democrats, but embraced as a fundamental component of our political philosophy. Now, though, too many leading Democrats consider faith to be some kind of personal failing, so much so that they recoil in horror at the thought of a president holding the Bible aloft as a symbol of unity. 

Meanwhile, the symbolism on display at the DNC is genuinely divisive, pitting Americans against each other based on superficial differences such as skin color and nationality. Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed that one day his children would be judged by the content of their character. Today’s Democratic Party is determined to take our country in the opposite direction. 

Ironically, Bowser also discussed her desire for her daughter “to grow up in an America where she’s not scared to walk to the store,” even as she stood in front of a stark reminder that the greatest threat to public safety in American cities today is the Democratic Party itself, which actively encourages far-left radicals to engage in destructive and violent riots while actively working to eliminate the police forces that exist to protect innocent citizens and their property. Was she saying that she and other Democrat leaders will continue to fan the flames of civil unrest unless we hand them control over the federal government? It sure sounded that way to me. 

But racial division and rampant violence aren’t the only things today’s Democrats have in store for the country. The high-profile speaking slot awarded to Senator Bernie Sanders — a self-described “democratic socialist” who has spent his career praising brutal totalitarian dictatorships such as the Soviet Union, Venezuela, and Cuba — served as a reminder of the neo-Marxist ideology that increasingly defines the Democratic Party. There was a time, not so long ago, when Sanders was a lone wolf whose extremist views were so far outside the mainstream that neither he nor the Democratic Party sought any kind of official association. Nowadays, Sanders sometimes has difficulty setting himself apart from a party that enthusiastically supports government control over huge swathes of the economy, seeks to reduce individuals to mere vassals of the state, and drums out anyone who dares to diverge from its new far-left orthodoxy. 

This is not the Democratic Party I grew up with. Today’s Democrats aren’t even interested in progress, prosperity, or harmony; they are singularly fixated on tearing things down and aggressively imposing their views on their fellow citizens. That sort of thinking can only lead to chaos and dystopia.