I am not, by nature, a very political person. I am a physician and put most of my energy into doing for my patients. My underlying philosophy is to allow you the freedom to believe as you wish, and I want you to allow me to believe as I wish.

As this election year progresses, though, I find myself more and more discouraged by what I hear, particularly in this part of the country from those who describe themselves, with a great deal of pride, as being “conservative” and who tend to denigrate those who are more leftists. When I was much younger, I also called myself a Republican, so my background is similar to many of my neighbors in this “red state.” I've spent much time over the last year trying to understand why I'm so uncomfortable with the current political dichotomy, so that I could explain it to others, as well as understand my own feelings.

From a philosophical viewpoint, the far right promotes the idea that government can do nothing well and that private enterprise and competition are the way things function most efficiently. Taxes are inherently bad, excessive and should ONLY be levied for the most basic of infrastructure needs, such as public safety, the military, roads, etc. The far right disdains most social programs and believes that those programs remove incentives to be self-sufficient.

The far left of the political spectrum sees uncontrolled free market forces as benefitting only the powerful and wealthy, leaving something of a caste system with only the “haves” and “have nots.” Government needs to exert much more control over our lives, to be sure that even the weakest of us are protected and financially supported. Of course, to finance that, taxes must be adequate to cover the costs.

I believe that a perfect society should fall somewhere in the middle and, to my way of thinking, slightly to the left of center. Since my childhood, though, I've witnessed a shift of the political right to the far right and a shift of the far left to the center left, so I now feel much more comfortable with Democrats. Much of that comfort comes from my life story which, to me, counters the concept that tax-supported government programs encourage freeloading.

I come from a family in which my mother was totally disabled with severe rheumatoid arthritis and my father was a rural Southern Baptist minister who supported his family on a very meager salary. His only other asset was a modest piece of property he inherited but couldn't touch because he depended on it to support him in his retirement. We had little extra.

When time came for me to go to college, I had to finance my own education at Clemson with loans and summer work. College costs then were substantially less than now because of much higher state support coming from taxes. When I went to medical school, most of that was financed by a state grant, paid for by taxes. It required that I serve in a medically indigent part of the state for three years upon completion of my training. During medical school, I also worked part-time to help make ends meet.

After my post-graduate training, I worked in rural South Carolina in a federally supported medical clinic, again funded by taxes, that is still serving the area's indigent population. Since leaving that practice, I've worked as a state employee at the student health center at Clemson University, as well as spending substantial time in area hospital emergency rooms and Clemson's Urgent Care Center. I feel I've contributed to the health of thousands of patients and as I approach the end of my career at Clemson, look forward to doing more volunteer work for the Anderson area.

While I may have been able to get my education without involving any tax money or public service, it would have been substantially harder and may have thrown me totally out of a career in medicine. Today's students financing their education with loans graduate with massive debt. It may be mathematically impossible to repay those sums with average middle-class salaries, excluding many from higher education.

As I've struggled with trying to define the difference between the political right and the political left, I certainly do not advocate a socialist state. However, I see the political right now embracing a policy of encouraging a nation of 300 million individuals to look after their own self interests, leaving those in the lower half losing the ability to compete against the upper half.

I believe our nation would be healthier if all, even those in the lower half of our society, were protected and given enough assistance to allow them to compete up to their ability. A fully funded education system, with adequate salaries to attract good teachers, would serve our nation better than private school vouchers for the economically advantaged, to the detriment of those struggling just to get by. Universal health care is more to our nation's advantage than a health system that leaves a large segment of our population without access to health care.

To devote some of our time to assisting those in need will serve our country better than each citizen working only to improve his/her own financial interests. To be content with the abundance that we have rather than constantly striving to achieve even more, at the expense of those less fortunate, would give our country far more strength.

To continue the path that the extreme political right embraces will lead to increasing fracturing of our society and increasing isolationism. If we could look at others in our country more as our family and less like our competitors, we would have much more strength and durability.

I believe a nation embracing 300 million individuals will last, whereas a nation of 300 million individuals who happen to belong to one nation will not.