When George Bush finally admitted that radical climate change is taking place and that man-made carbon dioxide is responsible, it was an embarrassment to the extreme fringe of the GOP. It had to be especially uncomfortable for all those letter-to-the-editor writers who used newspapers to tell us that global warming was a hoax. For years, we were overwhelmed by talking points borrowed from all their favorite conservative political radio talkers. Those letters tended to look alike because they were the product of a prepackaged political agenda.  But we can learn from those letters we’ve endured for the last seven years. We can learn to appreciate the dangers of being too committed to every policy and agenda that is handed down to us from the political party of our choice. 

Go back and look and you will see there is no difference in the science of climate change today and the science that existed seven years ago. Put another way, we have wasted seven years in our effort to solve the problem because a purely political agenda became more relevant than the well being of future generations. The concept of the global warming hoax made its way from leadership to the foot solider, unfiltered and unquestioned. It became a party line issue – an inflexible political ideology.  

And here is what blind ideology looks like: Almost 70 percent of Republicans think invading Iraq was a good decision; overall, only 35 percent of the entire country thinks it was right. Only 36 percent of Democrats were willing to admit that Bill Clinton’s insane sexual fiasco with Monica Lewinsky was an important national issue. With both of these, we see how the power of ideology trumps good sense. It’s easy for individuals to find comfort in the crowd of like-minded people who validate most parts of the way they view the world. That is how political parties sustain themselves.

But democracy sustains itself in a different way. It is a fragile political system that suffers when inflexible party ideology overpowers science or rational judgment. However, it is a system that flourishes when we care about our identity as an American more than our association with a political party. 

In a totalitarian system, the process of choice about party issues is easier: there is no choice. When party ideologues pronounce that global warming is a hoax, there’s no responsibility put on the shoulders of foot soldiers to analyze the good sense of that party position. There is only one position, one acceptable truth. 

Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party was designed to operate with totalitarian qualities. But if you follow political polling, it’s easy to conclude that the rank and file of both parties has started believing in only one truth, one reality. It is the one truth that allows them to fit into that group of GOP elephants comfortably. It’s that one reality that allows them to mingle with Democratic donkeys. It appears more and more that we have exchanged our responsibility to democracy for blind loyalty to our political party.

And the issue of the global warming hoax? Well, it shows us just how dangerous that kind of party politics can be.