{"id":695,"date":"2017-03-22T12:46:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T16:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/?p=695"},"modified":"2017-03-22T12:46:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T16:46:11","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-be-in-a-political-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/what-does-it-mean-to-be-in-a-political-party\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean to be in a political party?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Gabby Lewis, staff writer<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the 2016 presidential race\u2019s start and end, several citizens have more openly shared their political beliefs; as a result, the two majority parties in the United States have become more divided than ever. Democrats and Republicans demonize one another and stand on completely different ends of the political spectrum and refute ideas from the opposing party because they are determined to remain so separated. Even at River Hill, students\u2019 individual political beliefs are finally coming to light and are affecting the community in several ways. While we can\u2019t cause a massive, wave-like impact across the country to try and minimize the barriers between liberals and conservatives, there are ways to try and fix it here. To begin lessening the gap between those in opposing parties, the first place to start is to get down to people\u2019s cores, to the reasons why they\u2019re in their chosen parties.<\/p>\n

At River Hill, sophomore Marisa Torre leads the school\u2019s Young Democrats of America, a chapter in a national organization. She asked students about what political party they lean towards and why, and she received a wide variety of responses in return. In addition, she also asked how they thought politics have affected them in school as well as the country, how they feel when others\u2019 political beliefs differ from theirs.<\/p>\n

Liberals in general responded that they side with the Democratic party because of their accepting ideals of equal opportunity for all regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, and gender. Some specific reasons include that liberals seem fairer, and they are more willing to accommodate people in order to help them succeed. Sophomore Vyom Iyer was interviewed and said she was a liberal, stating, \u201cI believe in family and all the policies that support families and not only the families that are in the top 5% and giving money to those people living beyond their means.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she leads the Young Democrats, Torre didn\u2019t hesitate to ask conservatives for their thoughts as well. Those siding with the Republican party tended to say that they were a part of the party because of parental influence or because of policies they agreed with, such as foreign policy, which are pillars of the party. A more specific reason which was stated by junior Matthew Island was that he sides with the Republican party because he agrees with the promotion of working hard to achieve one\u2019s own ambitions. Island states, \u201cI believe in a system of government that encourages individual success as opposed to the entire group. I believe more in the encouragement of individuality and individual success.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students\u2019 opinions strip away conflict between the parties and reaches down to the core of why they support what they support for positive reasons rather than because the other party is doing something negative. When Torre asked them all how they thought the race and the results of the election affected the country, a general consensus rose: a great divide has been created which keeps citizens from working together as one nation and instead keeps them apart.<\/p>\n

Ideals for both majority parties have been exaggerated and cause people to judge one another by their political parties. They assume that if someone says they\u2019re a Democrat or a Republican, they immediately agree with the most extreme policies when they isn\u2019t the case for several people. By spreading personal beliefs on politics through discussion instead of just stereotyping, River Hill may create a more inclusive and less hostile political community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Gabby Lewis, staff writer Since the 2016 presidential race\u2019s start and end, several citizens have more openly shared their political beliefs; as a result, the two majority parties in the United States have become more divided than ever. Democrats and Republicans demonize one another and stand on completely different ends of the political spectrum…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/url.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}