Conservative Vs Progressive. Why the budget stalemate.

The current budget issues America is dealing with will be a battle ground with very little common ground to compromise on. Why? The philosophy and mind set of the two parties.

Republicans are now made up to three primary groups:

The Tea Party. They are more or less pure libertarians. That is to say that they lean more toward anarchy as a form of self governance. At a minimum they will accept a government limited to the President, Congress, Defense Department, State Department and the Judiciary. They want to eliminate the Federal Reserve or a Central Bank. Go back to the system that each private bank issues their own currency and all government payments must be paid with gold. This was the way it was in the 19th century. They support survival of the fittest, that is if you are unable to earn enough wealth to take care of your needs and retirement, tough. It is not societies responsibility to assist you in any way. If you need charity, then that should be provided by private charitable organization that are funded by donations. They want a country as it was centuries ago in a feudal type of system. The peasants are the working class that most of us are in.

The second group in the GOP are the "social conservatives" who actually want an evangelical ruled society. They would like to eliminate the separation of church and state. To them God's laws are supreme and all public policy laws must conform to the supreme laws of God.

The third group are the pure capitalists. They want a country that is governed totally by the free market system. Much like the libertarians, they want government reduced to just Congress, the President, the Judiciary, and the State Department. Defense can be contracted to private military corporations like Black Water through the Administration, as well as federal law enforcement and the prison system. The only court they would have publicly funded would be the Supreme Court. All other courts would be contracted out to private corporations to operate. The theory is that if there are no governmental oversight and regulations, the wealthy and corporations will invest in businesses and employ the working class to a point of near 100% employment. That of course is fantasy and one can see that during the George W administration, his lower tax rate for the very wealthy did not stimulate jobs, but actually killed jobs by moving them over seas.

If you look at what has happened since Ronald Reagan's Revolution, "Government can not solve the problems, government is the problem," you will understand how these Republican groups have methodically enable a crisis that would afford them the ability to change our country back to the feudal form of system. Milton Friedman had a statement that was widely used in the Reagan White House, "starve the beast." That meant that you spend and spend at the same time as reducing taxes to a point that you are so far in debt that all government services will have to be curtailed in order to pay off the debt. Reagan increased the national debt by 184%, Bush I actually tried to reduce it, as he did not support what he called Reagan's Voodoo Economics. Clinton was able to balance the budget and was on track to pay off the total national debt within a decade. He however was also complicit in supporting deregulation of the financial industry that was started by Reagan. This of course led to the economic collapse of 2008, if anyone remembers.

Now on the other hand, the Democrats are made up of several groups as well:

The largest group are Progressives or sometimes called Liberals, that see government not as the problem, but as a way to support and better society as a whole through limited social programs that aid those in need, such as seniors, the disabled, and those who just made back choices or bad luck. But still support the Capitalist system, with limited oversight and control by government to make sure that everyone is on a level playing field and consumers or ordinary citizens are protected from corporate greed. They believe that workers should receive fair compensation in comparison to executives. That is why they have supported labor unions. They want to see government operated efficiently and without corruption. They also want transparency in all government transactions so that the citizenry knows what they are doing. This group wants a progressive tax system that taxes those who make more money by requiring them to pay more taxes.

A very small group are pure socialists. They would like to see most every basic need provided by government and harsh restraint and control of corporations and the very wealthy. This group wants the huge taxes on the very wealthy and corporations to support the socialist programs. These programs range from housing, food, transportation and health care.

The next group that also agrees with the Tea Party libertarians regarding civil liberties, are the Civil Libertarians, but moderately fiscal conservative. They believe that there should be very limited laws pertaining to personal behaviors. Only the most egregious, such as murder, fraud, violence against person or property, etc. should be outlawed. But most all other behaviors such as who you can love, have sex with (limited to humans with age limit), what you read, watch, or hear, woman's right to choice regarding pregnancy should not be considerations of government or laws. This actually is in agreement with the pure libertarians of the Republican party.

As it come to what America should become, you can see there are two very different ideas. For most of the past 70 years, we have been the compassionate country with limited social programs to help the needy and elderly. It made us the greatest society ever on the planet. But that is threatened today by the Republican push to turn the clock back centuries to a time that most of the wealth is held by a very small part of the population and all others are in servitude to them for their lively hood.

In combination with this, the Republican movement is attempting to manipulate the electoral system to insure they are in constant power and any opposition is a minority, a very small minority, so as to not effect their ability to pass laws that they or the corporations want. This is part of Karl Roves plan that the Kock brothers are funding. We see this in all the states that are controlled by Republicans this year with all their draconian laws that are stripping collective bargaining rights, stripping funding for government services, and lowering taxes for corporations and the wealthy.

So will the average working American wake up to this movement and challenge it, as they have in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan? Only time will tell.