THOSE WHO RENT OUT THEIR MINDS TO A POLITICAL PARTY LOSE THEIR COUNTRY
Voting for a political party is democracy. But defending that party no matter what it does is not democracy. It is partisanship.
A country cannot be governed as if it were a football team. In football, your team may lose. In politics, however, we all pay the price for wrong decisions.
When it comes from our side:
“They must know something we don’t.”
When it comes from the other side:
“The country is going to ruin.”
The same mistake is given two different names.
When our side makes it, it is called a “mistake.” When the other side makes it, it is called “treason.”
In such a place, it is no longer justice that speaks, but belonging.
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One of the most dangerous forms of self-deception is this:
“Believing that you are defending your country while defending the mistakes of your own side.”
Yet a country belongs to those who are capable of calling a mistake a “mistake,” whoever makes it.
Criticizing a politician is not hostility. Pointing out your own party’s mistakes is not betrayal. Thinking differently is not separatism. Asking questions is not ingratitude.
Societies that confuse these things first lose their ability to think, and then their courage to object.
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I do not look at which party you vote for. I look at this:
“Can you call your own side’s mistake a ‘mistake’?”
If you cannot, then what you have is not so much a political view as a political allegiance.
Because when a person surrenders their mind to a political party, their conscience often remains confined within the boundaries of that party as well.
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Parties are temporary. Leaders are temporary. Governments are temporary. Elections are temporary.
But the price of wrong decisions passed on to our children may have to be paid for years, even for generations.
That is why a person’s loyalty should not be to a political party, but to the truth.
Because the person who is afraid of losing their party is a partisan; the person who is afraid of losing the truth is a citizen.
A country is not held together by millions of people who believe in the same political party.
Its real strength lies in the millions who, when necessary, have the courage to say “No” even to their own side.
Because democracy is not defending everything “our side” does.
Democracy is having the courage to stand against wrongdoing, whoever commits it.