By C.J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
What happened in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District should get everyone’s attention.
Democratic socialist Melat Kiros just defeated Diana DeGette, a 15-term Democratic incumbent who has represented Denver for nearly three decades. This was not a conservative beating a liberal. This was the activist left defeating the Democratic establishment from inside its own party.
That matters.
The Democratic Party increasingly has no effective guardrails against its most radical elements. The fringe is no longer staying on the fringe. It is organizing, primarying incumbents, capturing safe seats, and moving ideas once considered extreme into the party’s mainstream.
That is dangerous for the country because democratic socialism does not produce liberty, prosperity, strong families, or durable institutions. It replaces gratitude for America’s constitutional order with resentment toward it. It replaces personal responsibility with dependency. It replaces honest debate with tribal slogans. And it teaches people to see their neighbors not as fellow citizens, but as oppressors or enemies.
But conservatives should not look at this with smug satisfaction. We should look at it as a warning.
Every political movement has temptations. The Left is being captured by envy, resentment, and utopian promises. The Right must not be captured by anger, ignorance, division, or opportunists who exploit patriotic people while weakening the very principles they claim to defend.
The Republican Party has a great inheritance: ordered liberty, constitutional government, human dignity, economic opportunity, the defense of life, strong families, and the belief that free citizens can govern themselves. It was born as the party of anti-slavery. At its best, it has defended prosperity, freedom, and national purpose.
But inheritance is not enough. We have to preserve it.
That means clinging to truth when lies are useful. Wisdom when anger is easier. Unity when division is profitable. Intellectual seriousness when slogans are tempting. Effective communication when outrage gets more attention.
If conservatives want to prevent our party from suffering the same fate now consuming the Democrats, we have to be better than reactionary. We have to be principled, informed, morally serious, and disciplined.
America does not need two parties racing toward tribal extremism.
It needs a conservative movement strong enough to defend liberty, honest enough to correct itself, and wise enough to build a future worthy of the country we love.
C. J. Garbo writes from a deep conviction that America’s constitutional order is one of civilization’s great achievements, and that liberty survives only when citizens remember the principles that made them free. His perspective is shaped by sustained study of American history, political philosophy, civic institutions, and the long struggle to preserve ordered self-government. He writes to help conservatives recover the wisdom, moral courage, historical memory, and principled unity required to defend America’s inheritance of liberty against ignorance, tribalism, dependency, and cultural decay.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.