Divided We’ll Stand, United We’ll Fall

By Jordan Rickards

It has been said that democracy operates much the same way as a circular raft, with all participants rowing in a different direction.  Washington’s handling of the latest budget crisis is proof positive of this.  The solution that was ultimately arrived at seeks to solve the crushing national debt by, paradoxically, increasing the national debt, with some vague, non-binding promise to study yet-to-be-identified cuts somewhere down the road.  In other words, our “leaders” punted.

            But because liberals did not get their way and failed to secure tax hikes and military cuts, the headlines that followed often bemoaned the supposed newfound lack of cooperation in Washington. “Congress’ Failure to Compromise Undermines Framers’ Design”, declared the Newark Star Ledger.  The headline of a similar story warned “Political Dysfunction, Factionalization Threaten Our Republic.”

            Of course, when Obamacare was rammed down the nation’s throat despite uniform opposition from the right, with all 178 House Republicans voting against it, and all 39 Senate Republicans voting against it, and the public opposing it by about 53 to 36%, nobody on the left complained about the Democrats’ lack of bi-partisanship.  Nobody on the left called for liberals to compromise with Republicans.  In fact, the only bi-partisanship was the bi-partisan effort to defeat the bill, as 34 Democrats joined with Republicans to vote against it.

            But now that there is actually an opposition party in Washington — by which I mean the Tea Party, not the historically pusillanimous Republican Party — all of a sudden government doesn’t work, and our founders are rolling over in their graves, and the very foundation of our republic is being threatened.

            Good grief.

            The problem in America is not that the framers did not envision factionalism.  The framers were acutely aware of factionalism, realizing as they did that America would be a geographically, demographically, and culturally diverse nation, which is precisely why they created a federalist system with a large degree of state autonomy.  They understood that Americans could live best together if our legal systems were largely kept apart.  What the framer’s did not envision was the loss of federalism, and the nearly outright eradication of state sovereignty in favor of a giant, overreaching federal government, collapsing under its own weight, that forces dissimilar people to find often non-existent middle ground on the issues that matter the most to them.

            If anything is causing the founding fathers to roll over in their graves, it would be our President grumbling that he has not been endowed with the powers of an autocrat.  In just the last few weeks, President Obama has lamented, with an arrogance unseen since Napoleon, that it “would be easier if [he] could do this on [his] own,” even though nobody contributed less in terms of ideas to the budget debate than did he.  He has complained of having to deal with our “messy democracy.” He even admitted in a speech to La Raza, the taxpayer funded illegal alien anarchy group, that “The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting,” and his effete press secretary whined that it’s “Unfortunate we don’t control all levers of government.”

            Actually, what’s unfortunate is that for two years Obama did control all levers of government, and instead of creating jobs, or reducing the deficit, or, heaven forbid, reigning in spending, he focused on his vainglorious Obamacare, which will destroy jobs, raise the deficit, and is perhaps the greatest power-grab overreach since FDR’s “Pack the Court” plan.

            Getting back, it’s true, of course, that if not for the Tea Party, the recent budget negotiations would have gone more smoothly.  And so what?  The negotiations would have gone smoothly because there would have been an obvious lack of responsible lawmakers demanding a government that operates within its means.  It was the Tea Party Republicans — who, by the way, just won the most recent election with a landslide the magnitude of which had not been seen since before World War II — who demanded spending cuts and an end to irresponsible borrowing, even in the face of opposition from within the Republican Party.  The Tea Party Republicans did precisely what they promised voters, and it was not to compromise, it was to stand their ground against an ever expanding, fiscally irresponsible, out-of-control government.

            Yet, now that they’re doing exactly that, the left tells us that Americans want compromise.  Nonsense.  People want things their own way.  The only time anyone wants to compromise is when they’re losing.

            Besides, certain issues simply do not have a compromise position.  There is no compromise position between larger and smaller government.  There is no compromise between more and less spending.  There is no compromise between higher and lower taxes.  There is no compromise between war and peace.  There is no compromise between legalized abortion and the outlawing of abortion.

            Compromise is good for passing legislation, but that doesn’t mean the legislation passed is itself any good.  In fact, it almost always means the legislation is less than ideal.  Remember that by definition, to compromise something is, literally, to weaken it.  If an army’s defenses are compromised, it means the soldiers are vulnerable.  If a ship’s hull is compromised, that means it’s sinking.  When a government compromises its laws, the result is no different.

            Still, there has become a generally accepted narrative that our political spectrum has two crazy extremes, with sanity residing soundly in the middle.  Moderation has become synonymous with virtue.  While moderation undoubtedly has merit when it comes to, say, alcohol consumption, it does not always follow politically.  Sometimes, indeed, oftentimes, the right idea is on one side of the spectrum, with the intermediate position simply being less wrong than one extreme, but also less than right when measured against the other.  This is problematic not just because it creates a flawed law, but also an entropic, downward spiral of increasingly worse laws.  Think about it.  Take pure water and compromise it with unclean water.  That water is less clean than before.  Then take that new bowl of water, and compromise it again.  Every time the water is compromised it becomes dirtier.  It’s no different in the law.  Take a good law and compromise it, it becomes flawed.  Compromise it again and it becomes inadequate.  Continue to compromise, and before you know it all you’ve done is spend a lot of money on ideas that did not work.

            Make no mistake about it: our budget crisis is the result of generations of unchallenged compromises.

            There is a time for compromise, yes, but for the most part, ours is not a system of compromise, but of majority rule.  And that’s more the reason that the most important issues should not be the province of the federal government, but should be left to the states and local communities, where people have more direct access to their government, and cultural, demographic, and geographical differences are kept to a minimum.  A one-size-fits-all government fits nobody.

            When it comes to the pressing issues that are invariably national in scope, we need leaders who will take a principled stand against the left, who will resist at all costs bigger government and more spending, who will defend capitalism against the command economy, and who will draw a line in the sand and declare that government has come this far but it will come no farther.  That is the only way America will remain solvent, to say nothing of prosperous.  There simply is no middle road.  To compromise with the left is simply to move slowly in their direction, down the path to insolvency and the destruction of capitalism.

            And so it is that divided we will stand.  United we’ll fall.

 

Jordan Rickards is a Middlesex County based attorney and the publisher of The Rickards Review, which he bills as “The Internet’s Preeminent Conservative Blog.”  (MMM readers know better).  Jordan is the Republican nominee for State Senate for New Jersey’s 17th Legislative District.

Posted: August 10th, 2011 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: NJ Media, NJ State Legislature | Tags: Jordan Rickards | 2 Comments »

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