My entire family were Democrats all our lives. But because how furious I was about the previous administration, I turned in my card to become a Republican. I did not want to be known as a Democrat under that person's regime.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.