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It's essential to acknowledge the distinction between classical liberals, who revered Constitutional principles, and today's lack-wittedly obstreperous who howl for America's downfall with no conception of how to engineer a viable alternative.

Many are the aging Democrat faithful, enamored of liberal icons like FDR and JFK, for whom today's Democrat party has neither respect nor use, save for as robotic, electoral booth lever-pullers. 

Veteran Democrats' loyalty owes to counterproductive sentimentality. "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," as Johnny Thunders famously sang.

In 2019, the Democrat Party has mutated into a bizarre assemblage of oddball, segregated identity groups and ill-considered propositions Martin Luther King wouldn't recognize.

King pressed for the American government to acknowledge all citizens' rights. He never urged that non-citizens be elevated to commensurate status.

Many in my family are Democrats. I was, too. For decades, I fought on the progressive side, even eventually leaving the Democrats to become an Independent. (Which I still am.)

I later helped found the Iowa Green Party and served as paid 2004 Iowa Coordinator for independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. 

(Legendary consumer rights advocate Nader is a strenuous opponent of undemocratic governmental machinations; frivolous defense and other budget allocations; unwarranted militarism; and America-based corporations' lack of patriotic loyalty. That's evidenced by their price manipulations and relocating U.S. jobs to lower-paying foreign markets. Corporations' "race to the bottom" wreaks domestic human and economic damages of various descriptions. Ralph Nader is a valuable figure with much to teach.)

The journey that brought me to support President Trump was informed by new information, honest contemplation, and openness to contrary perspectives. Concepts previously unexplored were given respectful consideration.

I'd always assumed most Americans revered Constitutional principles and national identity, and that we proceeded in different ideological directions from that shared foundation. 

Adults in recent decades might not have articulated patriotism as explicitly as had earlier generations, but I thought it was such a given that advocating in its interest was unnecessary. 

(I recall, as a 1960s boy, standing beside my Iowa Catholic elementary school desk, hand over heart, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with 20-some classmates. Back then, parental insistence that children be allowed to opt out of patriotic promises was unheard of.)

I later realized I'd been overly optimistic in my assessment. To whatever degree the assumption of common national faith might once have been true, it was increasingly apparent that it no longer was.

I realized my ever-extant American pride merited vocalization and electoral expression, especially when the nation itself was under attack on multiple fronts.

Demands that historical monuments be demolished, popular commonality no longer honored, citizen Constitutional speech and self-defense protections got rid of, and national sovereignty and citizenship laws erased, awakened in me abiding values that had always lain under the surface.

Progressives today have no sympathy for the intellectual and expressive freedoms liberals once defended and that I'd long held sacred. They promote speech-codes, library censorship, trigger warnings, booksellers' viewpoint discrimination, public speaker interference, political flyer destruction, Big Tech and financial services denying access based on ideology, and 'hate speech' prohibitions that can lead to imprisonment for saying something the government doesn't like.

President Trump's signing just days ago of the campus free-speech executive order was the most robust White House declaration of citizen speech support in memory. And that important action was more in keeping with my long-held view that government should protect citizen expression rights than is contemporary Democrats' embrace of governmental powers silencing citizens.

Nor do Democrats still seem to believe in defendants' rights or historical accuracy. I do and always will.

I've long opposed the death penalty. (On that point, I am in profound disagreement with the president.) But then, I haven't heard a Democrat presidential candidate speak against it since CNN debate moderator Bernard Shaw savaged Dukakis, in 1988.

And President Trump's message of American citizen oneness is certainly more in keeping with King's noble mission than modern-day Democrats' identity group segregation. We don't have a caste system, in which people have, by accident of birth, different rights. That terrible notion is roaringly antithetical to America's ideal of citizen equality.

Think about what 'progressive' means. Constant movement. With each victory, the goalposts are pushed further. Common sense notions that had over time shown themselves to be fair, sensible, and successful are shoved aside. And new 'injustices' are loudly bannered as requiring immediate redress. Progressives never say 'We'll stop here. This is far enough.'

Look at the political world. Is it still what it once was? Are allegiances proper decades ago still representative of your fundamental values, or might sentimentality be holding you back from voting as you now truly are?

Change is healthy. It can result from decades of serious consideration and open inquiry. Epiphanies also can be valid. They reflect realization of fundamental conflict between altered externals and previously unconsidered internals.

Don't fear evolution. Welcome it. It proves you're alive, and have a mind and a heart.

(This essay was adapted from my forthcoming book: "...And It's Good Enough For Me.")