The Party's over!

At long last the Republican party is over!

The orgy of self-indulgence and self-importance ended in the darkest hours just before dawn. The house of cards in which it took place collapsed in a windstorm of change and public outcry. All inside were lost. Only a select few got to enjoy the party favors, but we all got hammered and now we’re nursing an excruciating collective hangover.

How did this happen? How did the Republicans go from running the country (into the ground) to running for their political lives?

Well, of course: they were victims of the paradigm shift.

The Republican philosophy of “every man for himself” was at odds with the reality that we are all in this together. As Sim van der Ryn recently put it, “we are moving from the Me Generation to the We Generation.” Republicans didn’t understand that; they saw the world as basically frightening and full of "the others." Fear was both their response and their primary tactic for maintaining power. Ironically the more they looked at the world as hostile, the more hostile it became. What you see is what you get.

But Hope>fear, as the Obama bumper sticker so succinctly points out, so let the Republicans cower in the corner while the rest of us move on.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m celebrating the end of a regressive and misguided ideology; I don’t have anything against Republicans as people. We need them. I would love to see an invigorated Republican philosophy; after all, Teddy Roosevelt was a Conservative Republican. Maybe if Republicans looked to him for inspiration instead of Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh they might be able to enter the national debate with some relevant and useful ideas.