Posted by
Patrick Henry on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 3:36:14 PM
Peace for progress. That is the slogan of some Americans who want deals done in Washington
in serenity and civility. It is a fine ideal for decent people. But it is Alice In Wonderland in
the current historical context. At no time since the civil war (inlcuding the dispute over the war in
Viet Nam), has America been so politically polarized. Conflict, according the the classic definition,
occurs when two parties conclude that success can be achieved by one or the other, but not by
both. Washington is a microcosm of the nation, and the conflict there is between two ideologies
that perceive success as attributable to only one, with failure the only reward for the other.
Arrayed on the left are the president and vice president, along with the Democratic Party and
powerful political action committees like MoveOn.org. Norman Thomas, six-time presidential
candidate for the Socialist Party, dropped out of politics noting that since the Democratic Party
had adopted nearly the entire platform of socialism, there was no longer a need for him to run.
Socialism is a statist philosophy of governance in which the state, rather than the citizenry, is the
central player. The state proposes to care for citizens through generous entitlements, and citizens
agree, in turn, to cede to the state virtually unlimited power to confiscate and redistribute wealth
according to the state's notion of fairness. Based on his policies, many have accused the current
president of being a socialist and trying to re-make America n the image of modern eurosocialist
democracies. What is not debatable is that 70 current Democratic members of congress admit
to being card-carrying members of the American Democratic Socialist Party. Diversity within
the Democratic party ranges from Progressives, on the far left, to the Blue Dogs on the right.
On the right, is a group of equally adamant socially and fiscally conservative Americans. They
are represented in varying degrees by the Republican Party, and more recently championed by
the loosely organized, fiscally conservative Tea Party, a conservative caucus within the GOP.
They stand for a Constitutional government wherein citizens are the major players and govern-
ment serves a supportive and protective function. The free market and individual liberty are
centerpieces of this philosophy. Diversity in the Republican Party ranges from the RINOs
Repubicans in name only, so called) on the left, to the libertarian influenced Tea Party on the
right.
Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, the historical tendency has been for
Republicans to compromise with Democrats on left-leaning social engineering projects that
smacked of socialist influence. It was that same Norman Thomas who famously said:
"The American people will never adopt knowingly Socialism, but under the name of
Liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until America will one
day wake up and be a Socialist nation, not knowing how it happened". Little by little, the
nanny state has seized more and more control of every aspect of American life, and
sought increasingly to steal from those who have earned to "redistribute" to those who have
not. Today, the government seeks to tell us what car to drive, what lightbulbs to burn, what
to eat and feed our children, what we can say and what we can't, what we can hear or read
and what we can't, and the list goes on. Nearly half the citizens of America pay no taxes,
living off of those who do.
But there is only so much juice that can be squeezed from the lemon, and the socialists
have encountered the dilemma of what to do when they, as Margaret Thatcher famously put
it "run out of other people's money." The temporary answer has been "borrow and damn the
torpedoes." But, inevitably, the nation's credit rating has been downgraded, and we are
drowning in an ocean of unsustainable debt. Once can certainly argue that unfunded wars
have been a big driver of the debt, and that is undisputable. But the trajectory of government
growth is what continues to add to that debt and make us all the less likely ever to dig out
from under it. There is no more room for retreat. We are already standing on the edge of
the cliff.
The road of congenial compromise has led us to adopt parts of socialist doctrine. But
how workable is that? Imagine that I approached you one day, announced myself as a
procurer and told you I would like to add your daughter to my stable. How would you
respond? And after picking myself up and wiping the blood from my nose, suppose I
further said, "Well, would you take $500 to let me sleep one night with her?" The only
distinction would be whether I made her into a permanent prostitute or a temporary one.
An ugly illustration of compromise, you'd no doubt agree. Why would you refuse both
propositions. It is because on bedrock principles there really is no middle ground.
To spare us the ultimate fate of our national irresponsibility, a line must somehow be
drawn in Washngton, with those who cross it subject to severe penalties. The Tea
Party is illegitimately crucified for trying to draw that line. There would have been no
debt ceiling standoff had there been more in congress with such vision and fortitude. But
that is precisely the crux of the problem. There aren't enough Constitutional conservatives
in the House of Representatives or Senate. There are too many "peace at any price"
weaklings who, like the world in Hitler's early days chose to simply pretend the holocaust
wasn't happening.
And to answer the first question, NO, if this freight train to ruin is to be stopped or
diverted, we CAN'T all just get along. There needs to be more conflict. A whole lot more!
And instead of compromise, peace at any price, Americans must demand common
sense, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the Constitution. That will certainly hurt the
feelings of those who don't value those things. But better a few hurt feelings, than a nation
in the ashes of its own profligacy.