Very often, when we look at the politics of Washington, we see that not much tends to get done easily or quickly. That is because ineffectiveness springs from the seeds of partisanship, and partisanship is not leadership. The elites of both parties are not really concerned with developing legislation that is innovative and creative and actually solves problems. What they are concerned with is staying in office, keeping power, advancing their own vision and agenda, and convincing us that we must continue to vote them back into power at every election. I have discussed this manipulation of the election process on many other pages of this website, and it should be apparent to us all that the elites have perfected their techniques to make us believe that we have no other choices, nowhere else to go.
Added to this rigging of the election process by promoting the lie that only "they" have the wisdom, knowledge, and experience to govern, is another clever maneuver. The elites of both parties, along with the MSM, have also divided us against each other by creating false ideological postions of liberal and conservative, and each party has presented itself as one or the other. The Democrats portray themselves as liberal, although they have recently shied away from that term and are now calling themselves progressive. The Republicans of course, have worn the mantle of conservative. With these two false ideologies, we the people have once again been duped into thinking that we should support either party based upon our own predilections.
If we stop to think about the needs of our nation and how we as individuals often solve the problems we face in our own lives, we would recognize a very simple fact. In many if not all situations, a purely liberal or conservative approach to problem solving seldom answers the need. In fact, it is often a careful blending of principles and creative, innovative thinking that solves our dilemmas. This is what I refer to as common sense, and this common sense is what is severely lacking in the two major parties and the elites in Washington that control them Were the parties truly interested in common sense solutions to the challenges facing the nation, we wouldn't find ourselves in this fast moving 21st Century with an out of control budget, a foreign policy in disarray, an overly burdened military weakened by such a foreign policy, a free trade global market that is not fair, an illegal invasion that makes a mockery of America citizenship, and domestic entitlement programs that are threatening the financial future we are passing on to our kids by growing to the point that they will consume over 50% of the federal budget by mid-century.
There simply is no way that our nation can prosper and our freedoms be protected by entrusting the future to these elites! Their unbridled quest for power, fame, and fortune is sacrificing the greatness and the prosperity of America to the self-aggrandizement of these elites and their internationalist view of the future that envisions America absorbed into a new world order, a one world government. The sad reality is that we have been sold out by clever arguments depicting our nation as divided into liberals versus conservatives, and we must choose from the two parties to protect our self interests.
One of the proofs about the ineffectiveness of the liberal/conservative method of problem solving is the very fact that no matter which party is power, the solutions they offer rarely solve the problems. It is frequently acknowledged by our politicians that such and such legislation is not going to fix the problem, but that it represents a compromise with the opposition. In other words, if we the Democrats, or the Republicans, could totally have our own way, we would be able to fix the particular problem. Of course the party that happens to be in the minority at the time, the oppostion, claims that their soultion would work if only the majority would do things according to them. This inability to provide real solutions has now swung back to the Democrats since the 2006 election, and for 12 years prior to that, when the Republicans were in power, not much was done either. This is not to say that things don't get done at all, but to point out that there never seems to be a long term fix to anything because when either party is in power, they push for their particular philosophy. In the end, we wind up with half-hearted, ineffective policies that do not fix any problem.
Perhaps the best way to explain this concept of the falsity of liberal vs. conservative thinking is to use a real example, and Social Security is a good one.
From the liberal point of view, Social Security is a federal program that depends upon younger workers coming along contributing to the fund so older folks can retire, and they intend to keep it that way despite the fact that the program is going broke. They do contemplate raising the income cap to increase revenues, but other than that, they think it should be left as is. For the Republicans however, the idea that Social Security should always be a federal entitlement is an idea that should end, that this is a purely socialist concept and rasing taxes to help pay for it goes against the independent American spirit. They are proposing private investment accounts as the answer for future generations that would eventually end the entitlement.
The common sense position of course, overcomes both of these extremes and looks to provide a practical solution. For example, while it is true that Social Security is a liberal concept based upon socialism, it is also true that it is a worthwhile idea. After all, how many people could realistically save enough money over their working years to be able to retire? Our corrupt government has all but made that impossible due to property taxes, taxes that must be paid or else you lose your home. Why however, should we think that because the idea of Social Security is liberal, that we cannot improve upon it by applying some conservative ideas?
A common sense approach would incorporate ideas from both camps and provide a real solution to a real long term issue. Social Security should be continued, it has proved to be a safety net for millions of our senior citizens, and there is no reason to discontinue it. It needs help though, and raising the income cap level to $150 -200K will not really hurt anyone very much at that income level. It is also true however, that allowing younger people just entering the workforce to apply a percentage of their Social Security taxes to private investment accounts that they would own is also a smart idea. It would give young people some ownership in their retirement and decrease the burden to the Social Security Trust Fund. There is nothing wrong with either of these concepts except for this one fact. The elites who wish to keep us divided have put out the argument that the solution to Social Security is an all or nothing deal, that we either stay totally with what we have or begin to dismantle the system and replace it with a privatized system. In other words, either the best answer is a totally liberal one or a totally conservative one.
This divisive strategy is designed to keep the elites in power by having us align ourselves with the political party that we think best protects our future. Really though, if we think hard about the bill of goods we are being sold, we will recognize that most of us are much more practical than the elites are willing to acknowledge, and real solutions are not always one way or another. It is the elites constant need to accrue more power to their party that has scammed us into always voting the lesser of two evils. It is scare tactics, pork barrel bribery, and entitlement dependency that allows the elites to create these false ideological extremes that enable them to stay in power, and the time has come to reject the elites and their lies. As Americans, we are smarter than that and we can accomplish anything we set out to do. After all, we have been the engine of creativity and innovation that has given a better future to all of mankind. The application of that creativity and innovation, rooted in our freedom, is the hallmark of our greatness, and the source of all that we will develop in the future. It is our elite, do nothing, self serving, partisan politicians who are inhibiting us. They have proved to be incompetent and unworthy, and we should no longer put our trust in them. |
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