Partisan Bickering

Politicians like to use Buzz Words. These are words that either sound good, or sound bad, depending on what emotion they wish to instill in the people, but often how they sound has little or nothing to do with the actual meaning of the words, or with the real world situation that the politicians are talking about.

Lately, one of the big buzz phrases is "partisan bickering." This is something that we hear about all the time on the news, and it's given with the implication that the only reason someone is standing up and arguing against the direction that someone wants to go is because they are in the opposing party, and it's all dismissed as partisan bickering.

The problem is that what they are dismissing is not someone just being obstructionist because of their party affiliation or political ideology, but they are dismissing disagreement. Dissent, which is critical to the functioning of a free society, is being ignored and dismissed, not because the disagreement is not valid, but rather because those in power, and their lapdogs in the media, are afraid that if there is an honest public debate, their side will lose ground. They want to implement all of their ideology without anyone getting in their way, for any reason whatsoever, and so they decry "partisan bickering" every time someone holds an opposing view.

As I said though, debate and disagreement are critical to the functioning of a free society. People will have differing ideas, and they need to be able to stand up and say so, but when they do, in this day and age, they find themselves dismissed as being partisan.

Did you know that the Soviet Union had no Partisan Bickering? Did you know that Nazi Germany had not Partisan Bickering? Communist China has no Partisan Bickering. Burma has no Partisan Bickering. Nor does Cuba or Venezuela. Are we seeing a point here? For anyone too dense to get it, all of these are, or were when they existed, totalitarian regimes where disagreement would get you killed, or still will in some of them. Is this where we are headed? Impossible? It didn't' happen overnight in those countries either. Venezuela is a good example of a place where they aren't all the way down that road yet, but are getting there at an alarming pace.

On top of this we have some Democrats, like the senior Senator from New York, declaring that a totally partisan bill, like the so called stimulus package, is be-partisan, and how dare anyone not go along when he has declared that the Republicans have been met halfway, regardless of the actual truth of the matter.

Disagreement is good, and when it is gone, freedom of speech is not far behind.