PT-109 was a U.S. Navy Patrol Torpedo Boat commanded by Lieutenant, Junior Grade John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the Solomon Islands in 1943. His heroics in the Pacific during World War II against the Empire of Japan are well-documented.

15 years after the end of that global conflict in which the United States and our allies decisively prevailed against the Axis Powers, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives (1947-1953) and in the U.S. Senate (1953-1960), the 43 year-old scion of a wealthy Massachusetts family became our 35th president.

While JFK’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe has made headlines over the years, his patriotism has really never been impugned. I was in my early teens and in junior high school during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We won’t go into Bay of Pigs and other events here, but President Kennedy decisively stared down Russian Dictator Nikita Khrushchev.

There are many memorable quotes from perhaps our most eloquent speaker who ever sat at that big desk in the Oval Office. You can Google those if you’re interested.

I have spent a fair amount of time on President Kennedy as the first Democrat President that I personally remember. No one alive back then can ever forget the dark days following November 22, 1963. Perhaps another time we’ll look back more closely at JFK in retrospect.

My point here is that John Kennedy loved the United States of America and gave his life ~ quite literally ~ in the service of our country. Now we must turn to subsequent Democrat presidents to look at and contrast these leaders of the past to those who vie be POTUS 46.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a corrupt politician from the Lone Star State. The Democrat Party had made him JFK’s running mate to balance the ticket between New England and Texas. To everybody’s shock, he was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One at Love Field.

LBJ went on and defeated Barry Goldwater of Arizona in a sensationalized election in 1964 to begin his own term in the Oval Office. Goldwater was successfully portrayed by the Democrat Party as a warmonger. The political ad of a little girl picking flowers as a nuke hit had a large role in the outcome of that election. Some such images stick with you for a lifetime.

President Lyndon Johnson is remembered for a number of things including Civil Rights Act and the Vietnam War. Both good issues for another time. But whatever else we may think about him more than a half century later, however wrongheaded his actions in Southeast Asia, he was trying to do his best for this country.

After the Watergate cover-up took down Republican President Richard Nixon during his second term in office, Gerald Ford was elevated into the presidency. Which brings us to James Earl Carter, Jr., peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former governor of his home state.

He is the last Democrat I will ever vote for. I won’t make that mistake again. Not ever.

Feeling disenchanted about the disingenuity and mendaciousness of Nixon and his minions and disappointed with the amiable but inept leadership of Ford, I was a veteran enrolled in college who was ready to give the soft-spoken gentleman from Georgia a chance.

From my perspective, he started well with the Camp David Accords between Egyptian Anwar Sadat and Israeli Menachem Begin. But it all went straight downhill after that.

I was actually in Georgia attending a professional class in November 1979 when Iran took our American diplomats hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. When the rescue attempt failed miserably, I kept waiting for Carter’s Plan B. It never came. He didn’t have one.

My first vote for president was by absentee ballot from Clark Air Base, Philippines for Richard Nixon in 1972. I was back in the Philippines on vacation during the presidential election in 1980. I listened on American Forces Radio as the results came in and Ronald Reagan was declared the winner.

Jimmy Carter’s travels to the Middle East decades after his presidency have greatly disillusioned one who had ever trusted him. His heart has never been with Israel but rather with our best ally’s enemies. So Carter showed a nick in the Democrat armor.

Let’s fast-forward through the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton. I remember hearing Democrat Senator Joe Biden in 1991 shortly after the first Persian Gulf War saying that he saw no way that President Bush would lose the next election. Really, Joe?

New 18-year-old first-time voters in the 2020 election were born while George W. Bush was president and after the terror attack of 9/11/2001. But many of us today still recall Monica and when her boyfriend said that it depends on what the definition of “is” is.

For the scope of this current look at former Democrat presidents, let it suffice to say that however ineffective the man from Hope, Arkansas was in dealing with Osama bin Laden and precluding events of 9/11, at least national security was taken seriously.

Bosnia and North Korea were not handled in an optimal manner. But nobody has really questioned that the incumbent president was doing what he considered the right course of action in each instance.

Moving ahead and saving Dubya for another topic, our 44th president Barack Obama, about whom I have already authored a recent article for NOQ Report, fundamentally transformed America as he had promised, i.e., threatened, to do. Which brings us to the crux of the issue today.

What on Earth has gotten into the Democrat Party? That is more than just a folksy way of posing the interrogative. There is more at play today than mere human politics, more than political corruption, more than unbridled ambitions, more than the quest for mortal power.

Before delving into the real source of the problem with the Democrat party today, let’s consider a few noteworthy examples of the prevailing political attitudes. Both incumbents and hopefuls have subscribed to these perverted objectives.

Our United States Constitution is no longer universally revered and unassailable. Interpretations of the original intent have always differed since the foundation of this nation. That’s where the U.S. Supreme Court plays a vital and indisputable role.

By design and in theory, the Judicial branch of government is apolitical. Yes, in my mind’s eye I can see your reaction to those words. But, that’s the way the Framers of the Constitution intended it and we will save that analytical excursion for another day. Anyway, Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They do not campaign and face the voters for election to their lifetime tenure.

So what we are looking at here are members of the U.S. Congress, both Senate and House, and the man or woman who will serve as both President and Commander-in-Chief.

He or she will be elected on November 3, 2020 and inaugurated on January 20, 2021.

It’s not the time or place to analyze the myriad of Democrat hopefuls at this juncture. Rather, let’s look at the mindset that pervades the field.

Three decades after the demise of the Soviet Union with an old-style Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin striving to re-establish its international stature, Democrats in our own country appear not to have learned the lessons that brought down the Berlin Wall when we had a Republican president. From 77-year-old Bernie Sanders to 29-yo AOC, socialism has re-emerged as the agenda of the day. The young Congresswoman is too young to run today, but will be eligible in 2024 if her political party doesn’t cannibalize itself and implode before then.

Perhaps the best hot button issue that epitomizes the Democrats of our current day is border security. Virtually all those leading their party on Capitol Hill today have done a 180° turn, as a simple review of old YouTube videos will quickly reveal.

Those who try to penetrate our borders between official Ports of Entry are now described with faux passion, not as illegal aliens, but as undocumented immigrants. While feigning concern about foreign children at the border, all the while advocating infanticide of babies in the womb, Democrat demagogues are requisitioning new voters. If they thought any of these queue jumpers and hostiles would vote Republican, their tone would change tout de suite. National sovereignty is a concept they are totally unable to fathom.

I will give you just one prime example. Corporal Ronil Singh of the Newman, California Police Department immigrated legally to the United States. He was a Pacific Islander from Fiji in the South Pacific who had watched the TV show Cops from an early age and fulfilled his desire to come to his adopted country and serve in law enforcement.

A few hours after spending Christmas with his wife and young child, Corporal Singh was slain during a late night car stop by an illegal alien. This was impossible for the Democrat open border advocates to deal with. They simply didn’t know what to say. Despite being repeatedly asked for comment, they said nothing.

Their silence shows that their heart is not with those who love America and come here the right way. Their heart really isn’t even with those who try to come here the wrong way. The evil in their heart simply promotes their own selfish ambitions and doesn’t care what happens to anybody else.

This brings us to the point where we answer our original question: What on Earth has gotten into the Democrat Party? The answer is that it isn’t just something here on Earth that has polluted their heart.

Ephesians 6

11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The very soul of America is at stake. Unrepentant socialists and Sharia advocates now “serve” in the U.S. Congress. The moral fabric of our society is in shreds. We are ill-prepared to stand united against all enemies both domestic and foreign.

Those who would turn our shining city set on a hill into a banana republic are already gaining ascendancy to seats of power. Today they reign on Capitol Hill and in many State Capitols.

Tomorrow they may sit where our 40th President Ronald Reagan once sat. Then these words will come back to haunt us:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

That includes women. That includes children. That includes each and every one of us ~ both those who conserve our American traditions and those who do not. Whether we like it or not, our national destiny as Republicans and as Democrats is intertwined and inseparable.

Are we still the United States of America?

Is the nation ready to revive the American Conservative Movement?