It was cold out. Damn but it was cold. Perfect time to gather on a darkening late February afternoon in the card room at the back of Jack’s Pub. We came in stomping snow off boots, tossed jackets, hats, gloves in the corner and ordered up. All the mumblers were there.
This wasn’t a meeting, just a regular get together before those with wives headed home to supper and those of us without headed for wherever.
The drinks had been served, greetings shared when Walter Campbell, lawyer, former DA and county judge, stood up. That grabbed everyone’s attention because no one ever stood up and said “listen up, men, I’ve got some things to say” which is what Walter did.
I tapped the record button on the phone in case Walter had something to say that required saving for posterity.
“I am here today to tell you that, after living life as a Republican, then a Democrat I am going to die an Independent,” Walter said. “I am sick to death of political parties and all they stand for and I am calling for a return to what so many of our founders wanted.”
Walter began to quote….
“If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789
“Let me … warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” – George Washington, Farewell Address, 19 September 1796.
“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.” – George Washington
“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.” – John Adams, Letter to Jonathan Jackson, 2 October 1780. In: Charles Francis Adams (ed.), The Works of John Adams, Vol. 9, Boston, 1854. pp. 510-11.
“Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.” – Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #1, 27 October 1787.
“The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people’s money.” – H. L. Mencken
“I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.” – Ray Bradbury
Walter let those quotes sink in, then continued his speech, delivered in the deep tones of an impassioned barrister.
“The Republican Party today is an open sewer flowing through the nation. It is the home of hatred, of bigotry, of ignorance and ghosts of Hitler, Stalin and the worst of the worst. It is tool of those who would destroy our nation, trample on its history and turn us all into the walking dead, blindly obedient to Satan himself.
“The Democrats, faced with this evil, talk big and act small. They sip white wine, donate to PBS fundraisers, drive electric cars but absolutely do not want to piss anyone off. They are proving that they still act as a circular firing squad, that they can screw up a one-car funeral. They are, for the most part, sunshine patriots who care more about their own standing, whatever that is, at whatever level of the party they find themselves.
“That is why I am going back to the Founders. It is why today I went to the voter registration office, and I changed my registration to Independent. I decided I wanted to join the largest party in this great land. Did you know that according to a Gallup Poll in January 2026 45 percent of all voters identified as independent. Each party got 27 percent.
“It is time to end this structure of greed and narrow interest. It is time to vote as citizens, not as members of a party. We are seeing people taking the streets in our cities, pushing back against ICE, against the evil that walks among us. The people. No one is carrying a sign for a party. The parties trail the spirit and will of the people and thus can never lead.”
Walter sat down, took a sip of his single-malt Scotch and looked around the table.
“Well,” he said. “You just going to sit there?”
We did not but that’s for the next post. Things got spirited before the second round of drinks even arrived. – By Sterling Fields
