Forcing bad medicine

Following up on my last post regarding the progressive agenda unraveling -- this doesn't mean progressivism is through -- no, they haven't come this far to give up when they hit a few bumps. They will likely begin ramming through what they can ram through, then look for back-door strategies and such -- anything to move the agenda forward.

Plus, if we have another crisis, this will be a time of fast-forward action. But, will it work? They still need enough support to make things happen, although the office of president has been given great powers in the last 20 years. A lot will depend on congress and the courts maintaining the integrity of their branches.

You would think with all the public backlash that many in government are becoming concerned with their tendency to engineer and meddle. Surely the turmoil this year has infiltrated their bubble and gotten their attention. There's been talk of fear-mongering as some of the more delicate-types have fretted over populist viiolence, rednecks with shotguns blazing away at community organizers on the battlefield of our inner cities, but really we've simply started a national conversation about what government should and shouldn't do. Yes, there has been a lot noise, a lot of ignorance, a lot of screaming and chest-pounding, from both sides, but it's been a healthy debate and a good sign of public involvement.

Now that the loud response is dying down and the air is cleared, it's a matter of determining which direction the country wants to take. As the opposition to progressivism matures, the more calm and level-headed the resistance will be -- more organized and more intelligent. The public has been on a learning curve, forced to think about issues many had ignored for a long time. The cartoonish responses from both sides will now, hopefully, settle down into a serious battle over ideas -- do we want such a powerful state engineering our lives or do we want to take a more classically liberal approach that is fiscally conservative? Has the concept of a mixed economy shown that it's doomed to failure? Are there other ways we haven't considered? Is the public ready to take responsibility, self-regulate and perform in a combination of co-operation and competition which favors no group over another? What do we want our government to provide and what do we want to work out in the private realm?

If the progressives in power attempt to thwart this national process of coming to terms with what kind of government we want, and they try to enforce their agenda against the resistance of the public, then we have a large problem. The progressives aren't likely to be so brazen, although members of congress are talking about forcing the healthcare reform issue. This might be a perfect opportunity for the Republicans to redeem themselves and step into the healthcare debate with a fresh new proposal of free market solutions to healthcare. The progressives are crying about Republican stonewalling -- if I was an ambitious Republican politician, I would propose and then market the hell out of a brand new proposal -- one that is rational and will work.