Here's a link to an excellent column by David Brooks in today's
New York Times. To those of you who don't read Brooks regularly, he's the Times' conservative political columnist. He's not conservative enough for many are on the far right and seldom writes in a way that would appease the implacability of those further on the liberal left either, but I've found him provide thoughtful commentary on the "condition political" in the U.S. Here's a link to the column I'm recommending for today's reading...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/op...ml?ref=opinion
Right on, David!
Even our Villages Forum constituency reflects the partisanship, disagreement, and absence of Brooks-like thoughtfulness. Not only do we partisans assign our emotions and distrust to our political leaders, but we do the same towards everything from the media to segments of our business society and even to states, cities and regions of the country. I'm guessing that our collective feelings and beliefs regarding those politicians who we count as opponents would likely be a tie, pretty much like the rest of the country.
Our problem is the same as the rest of the country. Some of you agree with little of what I believe but aren't willing to even listen to my arguments. I'm sure you feel the same about me. I can see the same behavior, with even more intensity, on the various blogs and political cable TV entertainment shows. The problem is that if and when the Republicans get a bunch of Democrats thrown out of office in 2010 and 2012, it won't create a sufficient plurality to change how effective our government will be in addressing the increasingly critical problems facing the country. All that will happen is that there will be a different "party of no".
Too bad for us. We've botched it up pretty badly--electing representatives who fail to govern in our behalf, or even govern at all! Maybe future generations will resolve the problems. I'm actually pretty certain that they will. My only question is: will the future generations speak English or Mandarin?