Do-Nothing Congress

Everyone is hoping that the Democrats and Republicans will put aside their differences and work together for the next two years. Some really naive people are even hoping that the Executive Branch might be brought into this little governmental love-fest. Even realists expect that the first 100 days of the new Congress will produce legislation.

I have to ask: why? Why do we hope for unity? What does it get the average man in the street? When Congress gets to pass laws, they usually abrogate our rights, raise our taxes, tap our wires, incarcerate our terror suspects without trial, balloon our deficits, and, let's not forget, raise the pay for our Congress. I'm not accusing either side in the debate of being worse. The Republicans violate our civil liberties and give our money to huge, faceless corporate automata. The Democrats pass sweeping social legislation which doesn't work and costs too much money and then turn around and raise our taxes to pay for it. The Independents... well, they are harder to pigeonhole, but they're probably planning to spend our taxes on giant statues to Baal or something.

Since when is it a bad thing when the government does nothing. Debate is healthy, and in a sharply divided and partisan atmosphere, any legislation which makes it through must be really good legislation, right? Well, actually, probably not, since in a sharply divided and partisan atmosphere, most of the legislation that makes it through is pay raises and pork. But what's wrong with that?

I say, let them fight. When they're fighting, we don't get ridiculous wars, anti-immigration fences that will never be built, Stealth bombers that can't fly during the rain, anti-ballistic missile systems to protect us against the Soviet Union (which isn't a really big player in the international scene, if you haven't noticed), and ethics laws to govern politicians, who are by nature unethical.

Okay, I'm picking a little bit more on the Republicans than the Democrats, but they've been the ones in power for the last few years, so they've been able to pump out more garbage recently.

Unity is for sheep. Give me partisan bickering any day.