by Chris Messner

Created on: April 01, 2008

The recent bipartisan defeat of earmark reform legislation in the Senate is but the latest example of how the hard-working, put-upon taxpayers of the United States are ill-served by both the so-called "two-party system" and its seemingly impenetrable resistance to change.

Let's face it, folks, the two-party system exists primarily to maintain the governmental status quo in America. If you and your family are doing OK, as I believe most hard-working Americans are, it's despite, not because of, our government.

Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans make a great show of cat-and-dogging each other in their ridiculous battles for the hearts and minds of the opposing camp. Democrats have had the upper hand in the federal government since the end of World War II, and that control has largely shaped the society we live in today: Intrusive government, a progressive income tax system designed to control behavior and redistribute wealth, a Social Security program that is probably the world's largest Ponzi scheme, a justice system that favored criminals (resulting in a huge increase in crime), the dissolution of the traditional family, abortion on demand, national-level control of public education, ridiculous international involvements, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The list is long, virtually endless, and not something I'd take pride in if I were a President, legislator or jurist.

But that's not to say the Republicans would have done any different, or any better. In 1994, Republicans seized control of both Houses of Congress - and did essentially nothing to change anything for the better, promises notwithstanding. Then, in 2000, when, for the first time in my lifetime (I was born in the early '50s), Republicans controlled both the legislative and executive branches, I actually held some hope that things might change for the better.

Unfortunately, the only move in that direction that I can recall was President Bush's tepid attempt at Social Security reform. He simply walked away from that effort in the face of vehement bipartisan Congressional opposition, another example of the two-party system protecting both itself and Uncle Sam's "business-as-usual" way of doing things.

Bush turned out to be a globalist who grew the federal government to an unprecedented size at an unprecedented rate, and appears hell-bent on destroying American sovereignty, while Congress makes a show of trying to conduct the peoples' business, but its real effort is expended in maintaining power and control over all of us.

I wish all Americans the best of luck, 'cause, folks, the way our government is going, we're gonna need it, and luck may be all we end up with.

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