Left, Right, or Just Wrong?

It has been said that if a politician moved far enough to the right he'd get to the left (and vice-versa). With the emergence of the tea partiers, I began to ponder whether or not that was correct.

The far lefties and the tea partiers do agree on a few things like: concentrating power into too few hands creates problems for the people; the country has moved so far from its original constructs that we are on the verge of needing a revolution; and the people need to wrest power from entrenched politicians (Congress) in order to salvage what potential still remains for the nation.

The differences between the two perspectives re-emerge though, when you consider that the solutions offered from the left include reinstating taxation that tries to reduce the split between the upper classes and the working classes by asking for higher contributions from those who make the most, wage controls designed to return to the wage differentials of the fifties and sixties, and reduction of military spending while solutions from the right call for tax regulations designed to grow corporate strength, smaller government - which translates to relaxed regulation of banking and other financial industries, reduced investment in social programs, and steady or increased investment in defense and other security measures.

In short, the tea partiers seem to feel that any attempt to reduce military, defense or homeland security spending is unpatriotic while the left feels that excess spending in those areas is eating into our ability to take care of our own increasingly needy citizenry.

We all share the goal of a thriving economy with work for everyone, but the dividing line comes from the left believing that the way to do it is to empower the bottom end of the spectrum while the right believes that the way to do it is to empower the top end.

So far, though, what we've created is a system that tends to create a lower class that is dependent on welfare and an upper crust fattened by reduced regulation and tax breaks (hidden welfare) and favored by a constant source of cheap labor; none of which gives the poor a means of pulling themselves up or the nation a stable platform for security. So why are we, the middle class, living in a lopsided welfare state where the bottom gets welfare and the top gets welfare, but the middle just gets the squeeze?

It seems to me that if we want the nation to revitalize we need to devise a way to grow production from the middle. It's probably just campaign season hype, but I was encouraged recently by news of John Boehner's willingness to consider tax legislation that provides support to small businesses even if it ultimately means the end of the Bush tax cuts for the upper crust. If it isn't just hype, maybe it's the beginning of actual bipartisanship.

Well, I can dream, can't I?!