Compromise in Congress and Culture

For professional athletes, the feeling of total accomplishment--really, of culmination and completion--after a major victory is almost immediately and apparently crippling. Professional politicians die in office very similarly when they forget their campaign promises once in Washington. For too many, the election is an end and not a mean in the grander scheme of leading a nation to excellence as per the vision of its citizens. Washington's greatest plight right now is that it can't seem to realize that it's a part of the United States.

That's why Conservatives won the house this year. We, the people, did not elect those who would "drive the country," at all--to use one of the President's favorite campaign metaphors--not forward, not into a ditch. We elected Representatives who would give their constituents and constitution a loud and uncompromising voice in Washington. Because when it's not your voice that's speaking in Congress, but that of the people you represent, you have no right to compromise what they say.

The worst mistake Conservatives could make would be to compromise with Obama's agenda over the next two years. Doing so would override the will of the constituents who elected them with a clear Obama referendum in mind. The travesty here would not be so much in agreeing with a Liberal agenda, but in ignoring the common people who don't want it. More than anything, Liberal blowhards in Congress have angered Americans by alienating them, and Conservatives need to fulfill their promise of an open and responsible government or suffer the consequences of 60+ unlucky Democrats.

In the poignantly hilarious words of my friend Eric at Tygrrrr Express, "whenever a Liberal barks about compromise, he just means 'shut up and agree with me.'" An insufferably backward notion Liberals have, which translates into their foreign policy with alarming regularity, is that compromise from a position of weakness is not seen by everyone else as "giving up," and that a stronger enemy would willingly meet a weaker one halfway. That would never happen unless, of course, that "enemy" is Conservative. Reagan is the model of how we want our leaders in Washington to think; constantly personally torn over the paradox of gaining power to limit it. It is the Liberals who now need to compromise after 2 years of party line votes and majority bullying. What has come out of several years of unlimited Democrat power is a war between Washington and the rest of the nation. After all this time, the Conservatives were elected to compromise, to give power back to the people from a position of strength.

Conservatives can compromise with their constituents and return power to them by ardently standing against the Liberal legislation secretly written and then forcibly passed over the last two years. That the Liberals have been completely unwavering while in power is obvious, but I must argue somewhat surprising considering what I will explain as the culture of compromise and the myth of diversity.

Diverse opinions are the backbone of free political discourse, and support our nation's multifaceted interests on every level. However, to say that each person must be personally diverse makes no sense. A worldly man understands others' opinions, a diverse man believes them all; and so, how could he possibly have an opinion of his own? To ask a Congressman to compromise on his, or his constituents' values (though I've explained above you can't give away that which is isn't yours), is to ask him to be personally diverse. When everyone in Congress believes essentially nothing, you end up with opportunists, the only thing worse than ideologues.

A proper congress represents its constituents, who are inherently diverse. Hence multiple Congressmen for 435 US districts. And so a proper congressman must not compromise on the needs of his constituents, especially when that means seizing more power for himself. In the end, America is a representative government, by the people, for the people. Let's keep it that way.