So where do we go now? More than $2 Billion dollars later
and nothing has changed. The Democrats still have the White House plus the Senate
and the Republicans still have the House. Other than a couple of scallywags who
don’t understand what Rape is; most everybody is exactly where they were when
we started.
So what’s missing from the equation?
Well, I’ll tell you what’s missing!
One word sums it all up—Compromise. The art of compromise
has escaped every living individual in the city of Washington
D. C.
How can that be? After all, Washington
D.C. is the original Great Compromise. Has this fact been lost on the brethren that work
there now?
At 57 Maiden Lane in New York City—the home of Thomas
Jefferson, in the year 1790; 222 years ago—a meeting took place that solved the
two biggest problems haunting the nation as a result of the recently won
Revolutionary War. The first problem was where to establish the new seat of
government—in the north or in the south—neither open for debate by either side.
The second was the question of the war debt owed by the south to the north—a
rather hefty sum.
Jefferson, the Secretary of State, thought he could bring
together the two sides and solve the problem and this he suggested to Washington.
Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, was pitted in a battle with
James Madison over both issues. There remains some doubt that Madison
was at the forefront of the argument with what we now know about his
collaboration with Jefferson but nonetheless Madison
was the opposition leader.
Civility has never been a strong suit in D.C. but there is
little doubt that there has never been any two leaders that so thoroughly despised
each other more than Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton—no democrat and
republican can come close to matching this hatred today.
In any event, Jefferson invited the
two, Hamilton and Madison, to dinner at his house. The current seat of
government was in New York City, a
bitter pill to all southerners and the continuous ragging about the war debt
did not help the situation.
Over dinner and a little wine (no beer summit this) a
compromise suggested by Jefferson was established that located the new capitol
at a site that incorporated both the north and the south—with the Potomac River
intersecting the district—and the
payment of a sum for the Pennsylvania and Potomac land that coincidentally
matched exactly the war debt of the south $21.5 million dollars.
Thus both birds in the bush were killed with a single
bullet.
A history lesson is in order for Inauguration Day. The
entire crew, The President, the Senate and the House of Representatives should
be forced to review the original Great
Compromise and just maybe they should take an exam on the subject and those
not posting a sufficient grade proving their understanding sent home and
replaced by someone who does understand.
