From Loyal Opposition to Sabotage
When politics becomes scorched earth, it is the nation itself that burns.
Delise Tattum | February 28, 2026
Iwas raised to believe that democracy came with duties as well as rights. You voted. You accepted the outcome. You argued your case, made your peace with defeat when it came, and waited for the next election. Politics was competitive, sometimes bruising, but it was not meant to be an existential threat. The opposition’s role was to hold the government to account, not to weaken the country for political gain.
That older civic instinct now feels rather quaint.
In theory, the idea of the “loyal opposition” remains central to democratic life. But in practice, it is disappearing before our eyes. We still have opposition parties, of course. What we increasingly lack is: loyalty to anything beyond political allegiance.
Recent events have made this vividly clear. The State of the Union address, where political rivals once observed a shared civic ritual, has now descended into open contempt. Shouting from the chamber, orchestrated walkouts and the conspicuous absence of large numbers of opposition members were not acts of principled dissent, but of deliberate delegitimization. More telling still was the decision to stage a competing event at the same time as the address was being delivered—a symbolic rejection not just of the speaker, but of the institution itself. This is no longer opposition in any meaningful constitutional sense. It is a shift toward political sabotage, where the objective is not to challenge governance, but to undermine the framework in which governance occurs.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/from_loyal_opposition_to_sabotage.html
