Political Parties Deserve Citizens, Not Loyalists

An excerpt from the Substack of NCFP Vice Chair, Lennie Friedman

I do not have a large Substack audience, and that is fine. I use this space mostly as a place to think out loud and clarify what I believe. This piece is one of those reflections — about party loyalty, citizenship, compromise, and why I believe the country needs a different kind of political culture.

One of the things I have learned through my work with the Forward Party of North Carolina is that many people are not quite sure what to do with a political party that does not start every conversation with a rigid platform.

They are used to parties handing down a long checklist of fixed positions. They expect approved answers. They expect every candidate, volunteer, and supporter to defend the same platform, repeat the same talking points, and protect the same team.

That is how modern politics has trained us to think: pick a side, accept the platform, defend the party.

But I do not believe that is how self-government is supposed to work.

More importantly, I do not believe blind party loyalty is admirable.

Loyalty to country is admirable. Loyalty to the Constitution is admirable. Loyalty to America’s founding principles is admirable. But loyalty to a political party should always be conditional.

A party is a vehicle. It is not the country. It is not the Constitution. It is not the flag. It is not the people.

As Vice Chair of the North Carolina Forward Party, I do not want supporters who are “loyal” in the traditional political sense. I want supporters who debate, question, challenge our assumptions, and force us to earn their vote. And if we do not earn it, I expect them to vote for someone else.

That may sound strange coming from someone helping build a political party, but I believe it deeply.

I do not want a party of loyalists.

I want a party of independent-minded citizens who are willing to support Forward-aligned candidates when those candidates’ individual platforms, judgment, and necessary compromises align with their own values.

Sports teams deserve loyalty. Every season, fans can say, “This is the year,” and stick with their team through wins and losses.

But political parties do not deserve that kind of loyalty.

Political parties deserve scrutiny. Candidates deserve scrutiny. Government deserves scrutiny.

Sports teams deserve fans.

Political parties deserve citizens.

And that is a very different thing.

When party loyalty becomes the highest political value, everything else starts to bend around it. Facts become negotiable. Principles become situational. Corruption becomes easier to excuse when “our side” is doing it. Bad candidates become acceptable because the alternative is seen as worse. Government stops being a tool for solving problems and becomes a permanent contest for control.

Gerrymandering is one of the clearest examples.

When the other side draws unfair maps, people call it what it is: an abuse of power. They talk about democracy. They talk about fairness. They talk about voters choosing their representatives instead of politicians choosing their voters.

And they are right.

But too often, when their own side does the same thing, the language changes. Suddenly it becomes strategy. It becomes hardball politics. It becomes “the way the game is played.” The same people who were outraged when they were the victims become quiet when they are the beneficiaries.

That is party loyalty at its worst.

If gerrymandering is wrong, it is wrong when Republicans do it. It is wrong when Democrats do it. It is wrong when it benefits your side, and it is wrong when it hurts your side.

The principle cannot depend on who has the pen.

That is the test.

It is easy to be against corruption when the other party is corrupt. It is easy to be against abuse of power when the other party is in power. It is easy to care about transparency when the other side is hiding something.

The harder question is whether we still care when the advantage belongs to us.

That is where party loyalty becomes dangerous. It trains people to defend behavior they would condemn if the jersey were different. It turns citizens into fans and public service into a scoreboard.

And government cannot work that way.

The Constitution itself was forged through compromise. It was not written by people who agreed on everything. It was written by leaders with different interests, different regional concerns, different philosophies, and different fears about what this new country might become.

They argued. They negotiated. They gave ground. They drew lines.

And they built checks and balances because they understood something deeply important about human nature: power concentrates, factions form, and no group should be trusted with unchecked authority.

Many of the founders feared political factions.

I do too.

Not because disagreement is dangerous. Disagreement is necessary in a free society. The danger comes when factions become more important than the system itself. Once loyalty to party becomes stronger than loyalty to the Constitution, the incentives of our government begin to break down.

We can see that breakdown all around us.

Too many elected officials are rewarded for performance rather than problem-solving. Too many districts are drawn to protect politicians from voters instead of protecting voters from bad government. Too much political money moves through channels that ordinary citizens cannot easily trace. Too many politicians enter public service and leave with wealth, access, and influence that raise legitimate questions about whether the public interest was ever the priority.

And too many voters feel trapped between two choices they do not really believe in.

That is why I believe we need a different political culture.

Not one built around blind loyalty. Not one built around rigid platforms that leave no room for judgment. And not one built around the idea that compromise is weakness.

A government built by compromise cannot survive if compromise becomes a dirty word.

Compromise does not mean abandoning principles. It does not mean pretending every issue is simple or that every answer sits neatly in the middle. It means recognizing that in a country as large and diverse as ours, self-government requires persuasion, humility, restraint, and trust.

It requires people who can say, “I believe this strongly, but I still have to govern with people who see it differently.”

It requires leaders who understand that winning an election is not a permission slip to do whatever they want. It is a temporary grant of public trust.

And it requires citizens who are willing to hold their own side accountable.

That last part may be the most important.

Because if we only care about accountability when it helps our side, then we do not really believe in accountability. If we only care about fair maps when our side is disadvantaged, then we do not really believe in fair maps. If we only care about transparency when it exposes our opponents, then we do not really believe in transparency.

We believe in winning.

And winning is not enough.

The founders gave us a system designed to force debate, restrain power, and require compromise. It was imperfect from the beginning, and every generation has had to fight to bring the country closer to its own ideals.

But the core idea remains extraordinary: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

That idea cannot survive if we reduce citizenship to team sports. It cannot survive if elected officials are more afraid of their party base than of betraying the public trust. It cannot survive if voters are told their only duty is to pick a side and defend it forever.

I am involved in the Forward Party because I believe we need a political home for people who are tired of that.

People who believe the country matters more than the party.

People who believe candidates should earn votes, not inherit them.

People who believe principles should apply even when they are inconvenient.

People who believe corruption should be rooted out no matter whose team benefits.

People who believe hard issues require judgment, facts, good faith, and compromise.

And people who still believe America is worth the work.

Not because we agree on everything. We never will.

But because we can still agree that party loyalty is not the highest form of citizenship.

In fact, when party loyalty becomes blind loyalty, it can become one of the lowest.

The country deserves more than loyalists.

It deserves citizens.