Our political system is broken beyond repair

   The government shutdown is now entering its third week with no end in sight. And as it continues to drag on, one thing has become abundantly clear: Our current political system is broken beyond repair.
   Polls continue to show that the Republican Party is taking the brunt of the blame for this mess. And frankly, that's the way it should be. But the Democrats, despite their efforts to portray themselves as the adults in the room, are hardly blameless. The truth is, both parties share the blame for the gridlock in Congress because both parties have gotten away from what made them viable parties to begin with.
   The Republican Party of today is NOT the same Republican Party I grew up with. When I was a child, the Republicans were the party of smaller government and lower taxes. They spoke for the wealthy and for big business. And they were in favor of personal responsibility and less government in our personal lives. In short, they represented traditional conservative values.
   Somewhere along the way, though, that all changed. In the 1980s, the Republican Party hitched its wagon and its future fortunes to the ascendant Moral Majority led by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. They forged an alliance, for better or worse, with the Religious Right and everything changed. Instead of talking about cutting taxes and reducing the size of government, we began to hear more about the evils of abortion and gay marriage. Instead of trying to keep government out of our personal lives, the new Republican Party began to try and legislate morality by passing laws that, among other things, made it harder for women to obtain birth control if dispensing it conflicted with the pharmacist's personal religious beliefs. The new Republicans -- the neocons, if you will -- even invaded our classrooms by trying to legalize the teaching of creationism as science under the guise of "intelligent design."
   These neocons are xenophobic. They want to round up every illegal immigrant and send them home, and they blame them for the problems with our economy. They are radical theocrats who believe fervently that America was founded as a Christian nation, even though many of our founders were Deists who believed only in a higher power, but not a specific one. They would like nothing better than to turn our nation into a Christian theocracy, totally ignoring the concept of religious liberty that our founders prized highly enough to put in the First Amendment to the Constitution. For them, it's religious freedom for Christians and no one else.
    Today's Republicans like to invoke the name of Ronald Reagan. Since leaving office a quarter century ago, he has become almost a patron saint for today's GOP. And it's no wonder. Reagan was the last great Republican president we've had. He was the last one to espouse purely traditional conservative values. I have wondered from time to time what he would think of what has become of his party. I don't think he would be happy.
   Before this turns into a "Let's bash the Republicans" piece though, let me say that the Democratic Party has itself undergone a seismic shift in recent decades. The Democratic Party of my youth was "the people's party." They were the party that represented the working people and the middle class. They were the party that created and served as protectors of Medicare and Social Security and other aspects of our social safety net. They were the party that was pushed to make sure the minimum wage kept up with inflation.
   To be fair, you still hear strains of some of these themes from today's Democrats. But in large part, they have abandoned their principles in the name of power -- both gaining it and keeping it. Sure, the Republicans are taking it on the chin for wasting time trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act instead of passing a budget. But let's be truthful. We haven't had a real budget in this country since 1997, and despite Republican dominance of government for large swaths of that time, Democrats controlled Congress for at least part of it, and still they failed to get a budget passed. And when's the last time the Democrats did anything that truly helped the working poor in this country?
   The truth is, both parties have abandoned their principles to the point where there is little, if any difference between the two of them anymore. Yes, the Republicans have become hopelessly paranoid, believing that President Barack Obama is a "closet Muslim" who is leading this country down the path to socialism (and presumably Communism, eventually). But neither party is what it once was, and I see no hope that either will reclaim its principles anytime soon. Both parties are broken beyond repair.