Hold the totalitarianism, please

"Our country is going through a terrific period of unrest. Something is wrong...Where starts the mighty river of discontent that is destroying our respect for government,, uprooting faith in political parties, and causing every precedent and convention of the old order to strain at its moorings?"
                           Amos Pichot, 1912

Thanks to Nicholas Lemann, writing in the Nov. 18, 2013 New Yorker, for digging up this great lead. His book review on the Progressive movement is worth reading.

I'll add this: the only form of government which exists without compromise is totalitarianism and that is a form to which no sane mind would aspire. The childish among us, and there are many, will quickly equate compromise with surrender, with weakening of stands and values. Not so fast.

What we are really talking about is cooperation. The stone polishing approach of knocking off rough edges, the idea of thesis + antithesis = new thesis, the whole better-than-the-sum-of-the-parts for of thing. 

Our government has inspired monumental mistrust at local, state, and national levels of late, principally because of one-side, partisan bullying that these days passes for a legislative process. As the man said - there is a payday someday. It is time for the moderate, centrist grown ups to take stand before this country reaches the point of no return.