Turnabout is Fair Play

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

It takes what a lot of my Jewish friends call chutzpah for House Democrats who ran the House of Representatives since 2003 as if it was their solely owned domain for so long, now to demand a policy of the very bipartisanship they scorned.

John Cole / Scranton Times-Tribune (click to share)

With Republicans now at last in control of the House, Democrats who ruled the lower body with an iron hand, and stone deaf to the voice of the GOP minority, now cry out for a policy that will give them the important role in the business of the so-called lower body on Capitol Hill — the rights they denied to the GOP.

Hopefully the new Republican House majority that, while respecting the rights of the Democrat minority, will reject any policy that allows them to defeat or obstruct the Republican agenda that seeks to restore the sovereignty of the American people over the houses of Congress and an authoritarian federal government that relentlessly seeks more and more authority and power over its citizenry.

These are times crucial to the survival of the liberty of my fellow Americans — times that demand a united front against the host of deadly challenges that face the American people. A policy built around the reality idea that united we stand, divided we fall, is not merely the policy that must be enforced, it is only policy.

Unfortunately, the new GOP House majority will be obstructed in reflecting and enacting the will of the people who sent them to Washington by the fact that both the Senate and the White House remain under Democrat control.

That fact is a prescription for the malady of government divided along party lines — a government powerless to act in a nonpartisan manner and thus powerless to take united action in respect to many of the challenges we as a nation face.

There have been few times in our nation’s history where the divisions along party lines were as sharply defined as they are today with the national Democrat party firmly wedded to the alien concept that government is the ultimate source of both power and the nation’s welfare. Republicans, on the other hand, for the most part insist that it is solely from the people’s active consent that government derives its authority.

The last time such serious divisions existed the nation was plunged into a bloody civil war that tragically cost an astounding 600,000 lives including that of Abraham Lincoln, one of America’s greatest presidents.

We are, fortunately, no longer at each other’s throats as we were in the mid-19th century, and the issues that divide us no longer of such magnitude as to require the use of armed force to decide them.

That does not mean that those issues are any less significant than those that divided us in the 1860s — it simply means that we have at our disposal a better method of eliminating our differences than using deadly force against each other.

While far too many Americans look to Washington to solve regional, state or even local problems best approached at the local level, hopefully none of them are disposed to resorting to weaponry to find solutions. We appear to have matured beyond that point.

This is not to say that our differences are not both deeply rooted and defiant of easy solutions. As East is east and West is west and never the twain shall meet, issues such as abortion cannot be resolved without actual conversion of those who insist it is a natural right of expectant mothers to allow the inborn infants in their wombs to be butchered in abortion mills.

The possibility, for example, of finding a solution to the problems posed by the legalization of abortion for the present moment remains insoluble as long as a significant majority of the electorate reject any legislation that would abolish the so-called women’s right to end their pregnancy by snuffing out of the life of the unborn infant in their wombs.

Yet in this case, as in many others, the division between the proponents of abortion and its foes cannot and will not find resolution in violence. Nowadays we settle our political differences with ballots instead of weapons, and the election results that put John Boehner in the Speaker’s chair is proof positive of that. Republicans, do what we sent you to Washington to do — give the power back to the American people by reflecting their will.

Happy New Year!

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Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan and a political consultant. He is the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Look for Mike’s books and other information at Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

©2011 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. For info contact Cari Dawson Bartley. E-mail Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.