Dennis Cook said:
Very good post Steve! i dont always agree that meeting in the middle is a good thing, if we would have done that through history, the world would be a lot different. Imagine if we met in the middle with Japan when they were attacking everything they could, or Hitler, or the British Govt? If we met in the middle with the British govt, the US would not be and we would still be a territory of theirs. Sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in and not compromise on your values. When you do compromise on your values, then your values are meaningless. Most of the politicians that meet in the middle, dont want to upset the applecart, and usually are republicans who should be democrats. My values are conservative, my morals are generally traditional, and predominately what this country was founded on and i'm not willing to give those up and will always fight for them and against those who are trying to take this country in another direction.
Dennis you are talking about some big events that we would consider changed the course of history....who knows what would have happened, how would things be different? Not to say we can't learn from them either. I can agree with your statement about fighting about what you believe in. But going back to the Revolutionary war it was mostly about getting taxed and having no representation, if the King would have agreed to representation maybe that war doesn't happen, I do think eventually like all British colonies we would have found independence.
But you talk about this country being founded on conservatism, I read a good opinion yesterday, when looking at the definition of conservatism, it means to stay as is, status quo, no change, if our founding fathers were so conservative, we would still have an European style of government, so the author said. His point is the founding fathers were more liberal then people want to believe.
But that is all big issue stuff.......I believe the problem is even the dang little things that both sides know need to be done but they can't find a compromise to getting it done....that is the problem. Look at the student loan deal, both sides agree it needs fixed but they can't agree with how to pay for it, the republicans want to pay for it with cuts from social programs, the democrats want to tax the highest wage earners. Quite honestly I don't like either option. How about instead of letting the interest rate double, maybe add a half or whole percentage point? What would that cost the individual student and what does it cost the country? If that get you close, then find a program to downsize and/or take away a tax credit for something.
My deal with what you are saying then, is half the people of this country are correct about something and the other half aren't (depending on the subject and the polls) so there is no compromising? That isn't going to help us, we have been doing it for well over 200 years, (I wouldn't say for 235 years because there have been a few years we haven't been compromising).
Mel