Sometimes it’s easy to succumb to the herd mentality. Perhaps it’s because there is comfort in numbers. I bring this up because the current financial crisis has precipitated a lot of finger-pointing, as most Americans try to determine who’s to blame. Here’s where I move away from the herd: I don’t give a damn who’s to blame. I care about who’s going to come up with a viable solution to save our country.

As a conservative, I don’t have much use for liberalism. As I’ve said many times before liberals have a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature rooted in the idea that peoples’ self-interest can be sublimated to the “greater good” of all mankind. It’s the “everyone gets a trophy just for showing up” mentality and I will battle against it to my dying breath.

That being said, in the unlikely event that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid come up with the best solution to the current economic crisis, they get my support. Why?

Because I’m an American first, and a conservative second.

Too many of us have it the other way around. We’re ideologues first, and those who espouse competing ideas are no longer adversaries to be debated. They are enemies to be destroyed–by any means, at all costs.

Abraham Lincoln said it best: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

In the coming days, Abraham Lincoln’s words will be given their severest test in many years. Either the individuals who inhabit the White House and Congress will put political gamesmanship, ideology and partisanship aside and do what’s right for America, or our “house” will not stand.

That is not to say that the bailout package as it stands should be adopted unblinkingly. I’m saying this is a time for statesmanship to trump partisan pettiness. This is not a time to placate certain constituencies or play one group of Americans off another.

Seven years ago, on Sept 11, 2001 Americans began a brief interlude from such pettiness, one that was apparently impossible to sustain for an extended length of time. Maybe that is the nature of an America comprised of every combination of humanity that exists. Yet there is a vast difference between arguing like a family and the desire to annihilate a fellow citizen for ideological advantage.

America’s mettle has been severely tested before. It is being severely tested again. Perhaps staring at the abyss will bring out the grownup in most, if not all of us.

Maybe, at the end of the day, that’s a good thing.

atahlert@comcast.net

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