I have been very busy on call for the last three days. Tomorrow will be the 11th delivery in 5 days.
I have been reflecting on our current governmental conditions. I have no love for the current administration, nor for the leadership in congress. Ignoring, however, what I see as very foolish and inappropriate approaches to major problems, I am mroe concerned with the tone and nature of the controversies facing our government. Debate is too genteel and honorable a word for the character of the discussions, and so I use the word controversy.
Many are troubled by a lack of bipartisanship and consensus governing. I am as well, but I do not believe this is achievable under the cyrrently divergent values within our nation. In this respect, our congress is a good reflection of who we are and what we want. We have sharply divergent interests, and this is reflected in who we elect.
I do not see a compromise being possible over the legality of abortion. There is no compromise over school prayer, public displays of Christian materials in a predominantly Christian nation, over English as the official language, entitlement programs, military funding and our role in the world. Broadly speaking the divide occurs along a couple of lines. One is whether we will be a capitalist and entrepreneurial economy or a state-sponsored capitalist economy with a significant socialistic safety net. Another is whether we will be an English-speaking, Christian nation tolerant of others, or a nation without an identity within which anything is permissable and imaginable. A last, crossing party lines, is who will be responsible for stopping federal spending. None of these issues admits, by their natures, a compromise. Abortion is either legal or illegal. We either extend the socialistic safety net or we retract it.
What troubles me are the attempts to defer or to paper over these profound choices in national ethos and direction. It reminds most alarmingly of the political turmoil leading up to the Civil War. It is easy to forget that the Republican party did not exist in presidential politics until after 1852, and that it was formed in response to the failures of the then existing Whig party. The demise of the Whigs came in the arguments about whether to extend slavery into new states. The southern states feared being out-voted in the senate by a coalition of northern industrial states and newly admitted free midwestern and western states.
The Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 were the attempts to avoid a decision about the direction of the country. Like most compromises, it left one side disappointed and the other angry. Lincoln stated in 1860 that if elected, he would not alter slavery in the existing slave states, but would not admit any more slave states. The democrats were divided between a southern democrat candidate and a northern one, with opposing views of slavery. When Lincoln was elected, the southern states seceded. Ultimately a 4 year war and the extensive destruction of the southern states established the US as a nation free of slavery, but it took the demise of a political party and a war to make the decision.
I hope we do not come to a shooting war over the differences in views of national policy. It si disturbing to me, however, that there is no progress in resolving any of the social and financial issues facing us, and that we keep 'kicking the can' down to the future while continuing to spend unwisely.
Like the compromises that prevented war for 22 years, we may avoid an immediate reckoning with a decision about our future. When that decision must be made, however, it is likely to be culturally violent if not literally physically so.
Ted
I have been reflecting on our current governmental conditions. I have no love for the current administration, nor for the leadership in congress. Ignoring, however, what I see as very foolish and inappropriate approaches to major problems, I am mroe concerned with the tone and nature of the controversies facing our government. Debate is too genteel and honorable a word for the character of the discussions, and so I use the word controversy.
Many are troubled by a lack of bipartisanship and consensus governing. I am as well, but I do not believe this is achievable under the cyrrently divergent values within our nation. In this respect, our congress is a good reflection of who we are and what we want. We have sharply divergent interests, and this is reflected in who we elect.
I do not see a compromise being possible over the legality of abortion. There is no compromise over school prayer, public displays of Christian materials in a predominantly Christian nation, over English as the official language, entitlement programs, military funding and our role in the world. Broadly speaking the divide occurs along a couple of lines. One is whether we will be a capitalist and entrepreneurial economy or a state-sponsored capitalist economy with a significant socialistic safety net. Another is whether we will be an English-speaking, Christian nation tolerant of others, or a nation without an identity within which anything is permissable and imaginable. A last, crossing party lines, is who will be responsible for stopping federal spending. None of these issues admits, by their natures, a compromise. Abortion is either legal or illegal. We either extend the socialistic safety net or we retract it.
What troubles me are the attempts to defer or to paper over these profound choices in national ethos and direction. It reminds most alarmingly of the political turmoil leading up to the Civil War. It is easy to forget that the Republican party did not exist in presidential politics until after 1852, and that it was formed in response to the failures of the then existing Whig party. The demise of the Whigs came in the arguments about whether to extend slavery into new states. The southern states feared being out-voted in the senate by a coalition of northern industrial states and newly admitted free midwestern and western states.
The Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 were the attempts to avoid a decision about the direction of the country. Like most compromises, it left one side disappointed and the other angry. Lincoln stated in 1860 that if elected, he would not alter slavery in the existing slave states, but would not admit any more slave states. The democrats were divided between a southern democrat candidate and a northern one, with opposing views of slavery. When Lincoln was elected, the southern states seceded. Ultimately a 4 year war and the extensive destruction of the southern states established the US as a nation free of slavery, but it took the demise of a political party and a war to make the decision.
I hope we do not come to a shooting war over the differences in views of national policy. It si disturbing to me, however, that there is no progress in resolving any of the social and financial issues facing us, and that we keep 'kicking the can' down to the future while continuing to spend unwisely.
Like the compromises that prevented war for 22 years, we may avoid an immediate reckoning with a decision about our future. When that decision must be made, however, it is likely to be culturally violent if not literally physically so.
Ted
Unsettling it is, and as a parent I fear for the future we are now creating and will leave for our children. Our system of government, designed as it was to provide checks and balances (and, I would argue, its genius), is now showing the other side of that same coin, we are at an impasse. The endless haggling, posturing, blaming.....extremely unproductive. It is hard to imagine resolution in the middle of it all, and scary to contemplate all the unfortunate possibilities.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I agree wholeheartedly - as a country, U.S. citizens seem to be at an impasse on so many issues. Immigration is another issue where the divide runs deep. What will happen?
ReplyDeleteDavid