Bipartisanship? Hardly.

Further radio silence following the singular disaster of the healthcare bill being signed into law. I apologize, but I got fed up. A lot has happened since: Bart Stupak has announced his intention not to run for reelection (no kidding, Benedict Arnold, why even spend the money campaigning?), Justice John Paul Stevens has announced his impending retirement from the Supreme Court, discussions of a value-added tax have begun, blah de blah blah blah. I am not ready or willing to talk about any of that yet.

I want to talk about the two-party system in this country. If I hear one more person talking about partisanship and how it is injuring this country, I might vomit. Now, don't get me wrong: blindly towing the party line IS dangerous -- and, let's be honest, kind of indicative of legitimate stupidity -- but there's a major difference between voting with the party no matter what and standing by the principals you claimed to espouse when you campaigned.

In fact, our government was specifically set up with a two-party system in order to encourage partisanship. James Madison, one of the major architects of our political system, explained in the Federalist Papers* that political parties, or as he called them, "factions," were necessary for defining and ultimately refining ideas. This system encouraged people to get informed and make solid decisions, because each side's stance was defined clearly without any shading towards the middle ground. In a sharply-defined two-party system, there is absolutely no room for the apathetic voter who is easily swayed by smear campaigns or an abundance of charisma that isn't backed up with substance.

Madison's clear intention was for voters to take sides, which in turn provided a layer of checks and balances to the governance of this nation, and not for voters and politicians to live in a murky no-man's-land of bipartisanship and toxic compromise.

The other problem with the continuing calls for bipartisanship is the stunning lack of integrity in Washington. If we could trust that our politicians were compromising with the republic's best interests at heart, things would be a lot different. But in these days of political patronage and outright bribery in both houses of Congress, it seems to be impossible for a politician to do anything that isn't motivated by his own selfish self-interest.

Get informed. Take a stand. And for God's sake, stop bleating about bipartisanship until something other than crooks and liars populates the House and the Senate. And, for that matter, the White House.

*Clinton Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers (New York: Signet, 1961).