Fairfax, VA, USA. The essence of America and what we can bring to the world lies before us, but you wouldn’t know it from the behavior of Democrats and Republicans. The two great engines of our political will ignore the public interest, burnish their own self-indulgent resumes, and facilitate the downward spiral of our expectations.

The American political parties are demonstrably ineffective, but worse, are impediments to effective governance.


Rather than mobilizing our values, the structure and operation of the parties distort the Constitution with self-indulgent careerism that ignores the general health, welfare, and liberties of the American citizenry. Guns and butter warfare, fiscal mismanagement, and the horrid muddle of failed health care reform are only the most recent examples of what has become a continuously futile attempt to govern the United States.

If we are to regain our footing and reclaim our heritage from the selfish scions of cynicism and self-aggrandizement that currently inhabit the false fronts of the Democrat and Republican parties, the time has come for action.Both the Democrat and Republican parties tightly focus on their incumbency through gerrymandering, policy sleights-of-hand, fiscal mismanagement, rigging the books, and conducting dishonest political campaigns to ensure their retention of power. A previous column spoke of this in detail (Bring Good Governance to America. [cf. Note] The near total lack of commitment to good governance has accelerated for many years.

We have now reached the point where America faces the loss of our civic cohesion, our sense of self, the further deterioration of civil liberties, and a possible turn toward the failed political models we successfully rejected with our founding.

The Democrats

America's oldest continuing political institution squanders the lessons of its history by flailing about with lofty goals and impractical (and expensive) solutions. A disarming commitment to diversity based on physical characteristics masks an unwelcome intolerance of challenging ideas.

The Democrats avoided a truth commission following the demise of the rebellious South, slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation, failing to fully illuminate their own role in the perpetuation of evil institutions designed to disenfranchise our citizens. They meanwhile pander for votes among the very people they victimized. Even now, the Democrats deny responsibility for their sponsorship and passage of financial measures that guaranteed the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Why should we trust anything the Democrats have to say?

The Republicans

America's only political institution organized to fight injustice has a special responsibility in our politics. It was born in the fire of reform and great events that resulted in Lincoln’s new birth of freedom.

Today, the Republicans cluck over how their rather general, unfocused approaches are better, even though they failed to even mention such things back when they had the legislative power to take action. The party has sold its soul to values campaigns that are pseudoscientific, sexist, racist, and homophobic. Remarkably, Republicans have mortgaged both principle and practicality to bigotry and a veritable industry of scapegoating the most vulnerable among our citizens.

The Republican idea of the future is to invoke a return to a seriously rewritten past cleansed of their failures.

The Future

The way is open to seize the initiative and begin the hard and generational work of reforming our politics. Whether the change comes from dissident factions within the parties or from a genuine third-party movement, the work will be hard, frustrating and absolutely necessary.

Meanwhile, we are nearly bankrupt and assailed from all sides by enemies who sense our vulnerability and would be glad to push us over the edge. The lesson here is that neither World War II, nor the Cold War, nor 9-11 are really over.

If we are to regain our footing and reclaim our heritage from the selfish scions of cynicism and self-aggrandizement that currently inhabit the false fronts of the Democrat and Republican parties, the time has come for action.

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