***Originally published at Generation Extant dot com on 5/23/2012.
How little things change, sometimes.
The American Government as it currently stands can best be described as dysfunctional: a hardened group of partisan bomb-throwers have commandeered votes from the misguided masses yearning for salvation, but have delivered nothing but stalemate at a flagging economic recovery. All through our government, the decent-minded, soft-spoken policy-makers are being usurped by rabid demagogues who wish to see the Capitol burn only to build it back in an image that would best benefit themselves. The average, working American men, women, and families stand to suffer the most as our government is being dragged kicking and screaming to the far right, dominated by conviction politicians and emotional manipulators. Nowhere is this more evident than the expulsion of so-called "Moderates" from their own party primaries, all for the ludicrous sin of daring to compromise. The time has come in America to move and make steps to sweep away the corporate-minded, Tea Party-addled miscarriage of democracy courtesy of decisions like Citizen's United and McCutcheon.
Our populace has now voted in several hard-right and center-right candidates, with hardly a whiff of anything resembling a true hard left. The system is now unbalanced to the benefit of a maniacal conservative fringe, and the narrative is hijacked by a media bought and paid for by the conservative rich. In this topsy-turvy world made up of too many right-wing partisan hacks, too many center-right conservatives masquerading as "liberals," and far too few true liberals serving in elected office, it is the Moderates who must take control of the ship of state.
These Moderates (or, as they are labeled on froth-heavy conservative media platforms, "socialists") are the closest thing America has to a left wing. There are no senators advocating the abolition of private property, and no representatives in our lower house proudly wearing the badge of Communism or Socialism. What we call today's "left wing" is analogous to some of the tamest members of the New Deal coalition, the group that gave us the prosperity known as America's Golden Age. So now, when our left wing is considered Moderate at best, it is the Moderates who need to start fighting back. They can do it by defending a phrase that has been borne out successfully by centuries of Americans, a phrase that was part of the American lexicon from the first day of the Republic, a phrase that has unfortunately since fallen into undeserved scorn:
"I don't know, but I'll figure it out."
In 1776, a group of radicals did something that had never before been successfully attempted. America was the first in a long line of colonies that sought their independence, and it is the American example that continues to inspire the downtrodden and subjugated of today. When fifty-six delegates signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that it was not their right to succeed in their mission. They did not know if they would succeed; in fact, it seemed as if everything was stacked against them. Fifty-six men signed that document without a guarantee of victory, but rather with a better-than-fair chance of their own treasonous deaths. When they did succeed, against all odds, the first government they created was weak and ineffective. The country could have collapsed in 1786 when farmers rose up in Rebellion, if the original American government had stuck to its conviction, right or wrong. Instead, when asked how they could effectively fix the country, they replied:
"I don't know, but I'll figure it out."
Three score and fifteen years later, the country found itself on the precipice of again falling to pieces. When the governors of conviction railed against basic human rights, those in power sought to heal the union, to repair the nation and help it grow into what would become a bastion for freedom, industry, and prosperity. President Lincoln, when faced with the Civil War, did not refuse to compromise and let the Confederacy go on its way. A limited government would not have saved the day at Gettysburg or Manassas. Instead, when asked how he could repair a union badly damaged by his election, Abraham Lincoln said:
"I don't know, but I'll figure it out."
Years later, when the country again faced indescribable turmoil in the form of the Great Depression, the proponents of small government begged the banks to assist them, and the banks would none. When Herbert Hoover attempted a trickle-down system, insisting that Americans could fend for themselves, it became apparent that the average American was in far over their heads due to the negligence and greed of Wall Street bankers. Following Hoover, a bold President took office and in one hundred days that would forever stand as a Presidential benchmark, Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried everything he could to benefit the working man. Some of the measures are still cherished today, and some went down in flames. All the while, President Roosevelt said:
"I don't know, but I'll figure it out."
Now we are engaged in yet another fight for America's future, another fight against the decline of the greatest country on the Earth, a country that, warts and all, I am infinitely pleased to call my home. There are still those who seek to govern by conviction, or by emotion, and refuse the evolutionary skills of compromise and moderation that have benefited our country countless times in the past. Scott Walker's neo-Hoover policies have lost more jobs for Wisconsin than any other state, despite how the numbers are re-interpreted and manipulated. George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" embroiled us in two disastrous foreign wars with no way to pay for them, and ushered in the financial crisis that is currently crippling the nation. Big Money and Big Business have been granted unfettered access to manipulate the government and further marginalize the working American, spending untold millions to nominate candidates who ironically pledge to curb extreme spending. Why then, America, should we continue to vote for these Men of Conviction, men whose unwavering beliefs are not only damaging to the country, but counter-intuitive to our very history as a nation? Why should we hold our elected officials to an unrealistic standard of near-infallibility, when any recantation or mistake is cried at in the public square? Why should we ask that our politicians stop being human and that our government become what is hastily resembling a house of five-hundred-and-thirty-five Emperors, doling out edicts and refusing to admit mistakes? Our government was literally built on moderation, preserved through moderation, and saved through moderation. In this time and place, this crucial time and place in our history, it must be moderation that carries us through to a prosperous 21st century, not the proselytizing sermons of a vocal minority. Americans need to start fighting back to defend the measures that have made our country what it is today, voting to defend the strong tradition of moderation and compromise that has served us so well in the past. Americans need to not turn to either fringe, which will bring only bickering and further ruin, but the moderates who will work hard and long to heal the divides and unite the country again under a banner of prosperity and power. Most importantly, Americans must vote for moderation in order to give our country once again the right to say:
"I don't know, but I'll figure it out."