Little Ado About a Lot

Let's keep things simple.  While Marx is credited with having first trumpeted the concept of class warfare, liberals and conservatives have alternately fought for supremacy and coexisted for thousands of years. 

The politicians now fight the same tired battle, but the economic stakes are ratcheted up about as high as they can go.  A review of our country's history from its inception to the present reveals that this duality of thought will not disappear in our lifetimes because we are still divided into rich and poor--the reality--and the liberal and conservative philosophies upon which both sides rely are merely justifications for the hard economic facts that exist just below their surfaces.  So where do we go from here?

The President has changed the steps to this ancient dance somewhat by offering or seeming to offer the possibility of compromise.  Our nation still exists because of compromise after compromise, yet our conservatives are no longer having any of that stuff.  What, in this crisis, exists between the liberals and the conservatives that prevents a common sense meeting of the minds?

The third party with the "cute" borrowed name bears much of the blame.  I hesitate to pounce on the lack of originality in this third party's name, because a name is not that important.  Shakespeare, for one, could find little in one.  However, this lack symbolizes the problems in this party's thinking.  Its members know what they want: first, lower taxes.  Yet its members are too young and lacking in sophistication to understand the art of obtaining what they want: namely, compromise.  The Tea Party also desperately wants Obama out of office.  How dare, they sometimes whisper, should an African-American hold the most powerful office in the world while they, primarily Anglo-Saxon Caucasians, cower together under a sissy-sounding name?

But that is the situation, ladies and gentlemen.  Will you nonetheless act like patriots and allow the Republicans, your fellow conservatives, to do what is necessary to compromise with the Democrats and rescue the nation's economy while still maintaining their chances at reelection, or will you continue to conduct unthinking quasi-tea parties and disgrace the heritage of the true Patriots whose title you cavalierly borrow?