Over and over again each day, all we hear is the word bipartisan like it has some magical meaning. What ever the origin of that term was, it’s been bastardised and has morphed into some changeable idea of it own. Depending on the person using that term, the meaning of this word has a fluid nature to it, tailor fit for the individual who is using it. Even today Democrats and Republicans have different thoughts on what it means. 

I’d like to put forth the concept that bipartisanship is a virus eating away at the pragmatic direction our government should be taking. That the concept itself is inherently destructive to the future of America in the twenty first century. If freedom relies on America and the forces of individualism and free markets, how could one be bipartisan to a socialist ideology in where government has a bigger part to play in peoples lives? Today’s politicians lack the backbone to stand on principle and fight these pernicious trends towards bigger government. It’s one thing to be bipartisan and fight out varying ideas on a capitalist society and meeting somewhere in the middle of an ocean of compromise. It’s another matter altogether to be bipartisan on socialist ideas and policies. It is here that bipartisanship takes on the characteristics of a virus.

Only partisanship itself in its most abrasive and unforgiving form could defend against a juggernaut of evil and self destructive forces such as socialism. Bipartisanship simply does not apply in this situation. What is needed here is a fight. A battle waged on an idealogical scale equivilent to the civil war. Not a human blood shed type of war, but a war of ideas and principles fought to the death for the survival of our union. It is our survival as a free nation that we are facing, no less important than the civil war.

Now detractors and critics will tell you that the freedom of capitalism has failed and that this is proven because when conservatives and republicans had their way, it failed. That free markets got us into this mess and that their vindication for bigger government has been realized because of this failure. That when the chips were down, a free market president like George Bush, ran to socialism and bigger government solutions. This reaction from the former president shows that freedom doesn’t work and that a more intrusive governmental style is truly the answer. This is their argument. So where has been the counter argument from the republican party? Well the republican leaders have been too busy frolicking in the den of inequity of capitulation. Not one among them has countered a thoughtful retort to this dudgeon.

So let me lay out what I believe is the counter argument and the direction the debate should head. First of all the new axiom that it was the free market that got us here and no governmental regulation was the impetus of this, is not only false, it’s a lie. A lie put out by the same people who over regulated industries such as the banking industry, for one. Since there has been no counter argument, the lie became a truth. Barney Frank and other salacious politicians of his ilk forced through regulation, banks to make risky loans to people who couldn’t possibly pay them back. In fear of the government and their threats, these banks capitulated and gave out these loans knowing full well what would happen to them if they resisted. When the whole thing finally collapsed, the politicians who took us down this road, the democratic party, was able to shape the reasons on what happened and at the same time save themselves from prison.

The spectacle of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank being the ones to define what happened and being the ones to fix it, took on the feel of a Machiavellian tone and drifted so far from reality, one would be hard pressed to follow the money and the power. Also the argument that George Bush’s reaction to this pending crisis, by taking over the banks and array of industries, is proof that bigger government works and is the answer, is dead wrong. Just because a so-called conservative republican president panicked when hearing the news of the banking crisis and resorted to these solutions, doesn’t mean he was right. In fact he couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not any vindication at all. The silence of the republicans, because it was one of their own, made this concept take hold. It gave the democratic party an excuse to further their socialist fantasies and cover to say, hey look who started this, it has to be the right thing to do. Just look at how the government after taking partial ownership of industries, was able to tell AIG what not to do with their meetings at nice resorts or recently Citigroup being told they can’t buy a plane. This is the government telling American business what they can and cannot do in a so-called free market.

How is that not socialism? It is the poster boy of socialism and how it works. Once the government has that kind of power to pick and choose what a business can and cannot do, down to the way they travel, “ie the auto makers CEO’s showing up in Washington by private plane”  it’s over. 

Last but not least, since when does America, to avoid hardship and pain, run to the government to avoid market cycles? Would it not be better to go into the second Great Depression and crawl our way out of it a free people, no matter how long it took, than to change in its entirety, the form of government a free society lives under? To avoid hardship we are now willing to surrender our freedom to the government. These are the arguments republicans should be making while fighting this abhorrent change in our way of life. The republican party is the only entity out there poised to stop this, yet we hear almost nothing from them while they are trying to get along with the so called first black president. If this vacuum in republican leadership is not filled and filled fast, our way of life as we knew it is over. Rush Limbaugh cannot hold back the levy forever by himself waiting for this leadership. God help us all when the levy breaks from this virus. 

C. Rich

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