America's Crisis Continues

Each of the four Evangilists tells of an encounter between Jesus and a group of Pharisees who were trying to trap Him. His rejoinder has become a favorite of politicians : "a kingdom divided against itself will be destroyed." For Americans, this will instantly bring to mind one of Abraham Lincoln's most famous speeches. It was when he was running for the Senate and "popular sovereignty" was the proposed solution to the slavery question. Stephen Douglas supported it - that is, he was willing to let each new territory vote on allowing slavery within its borders. Lincoln refused this abdication of duty, delivering the lines that have become the name of the speech itself : "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." Lincoln said that inexorably, the nation would agree together to outlaw slavery (his position) or the nation would permit slavery everwhere in the United States. He could not fathom a country part slave and part free because the tension would destroy the Union. Why write about this in 2012, fully 150 years after Lincoln abolished slavery? Because America is facing a similar division today. The issue is not slavery but the Constitution - the foundation of the Republic. The two questions that are at the heart of the division are tightly bound together : (1) are there limits on the power of the federal government to engage the "full faith and credit" of the United States' borrowing capacity beyond the reasonable means of its citizens to repay, thus threatening the value of their Dollar and the future of their country; and (2) what is the extent to which the federal government can "disenfranchise" half its citizens by enacting social programs and enforcing social morals that the disenfranchised half oppose fundamentally. These two issues represent the 2012 version of the 1858 "house divided against itself" argument. America faces a fiscal crisis that must be resolved. The crisis pits a Republican House of Representatives, constitutionally charged to control budgetary matters, which wants to resolve the crisis by cutting back social program spending against a Democrat President and Senate which desire to resolve the crisis without cutting social programs. This may seem on the surface to be easily resolved through compromise. But the reality is that the crisis goes to the heart of America's Constitution and the two above questions. And if there is no compromise possible, one of two things will happen - either America will lose much of its ability to borrow the funds it needs to operate or, to prevent this, the President will try to decree a solution by executive order. Either will provoke a constitutional crisis unlike any America has ever faced. Dear readers, this is the true result of rge November 6 election. The United States is split down the middle -- and the possibility of compromise is as far away as it was before the election. Perhaps farther away because the two halfs have spent the last three months hurling insults at each other in the name of politics. Something must give if America is to survive as we know her.