Even God was willing to compromise.

The headline reads: "Tea party radicals paralyzing U.S., GOP veteran says."

The story is about the longest-serving Republican, Richard Lugar, who got bounced for being too moderate. Lugar is critical of the Tea Party’s influence in the GOP, which can be summarized as a purge of anyone who would dare compromise with the democrats, further polarizing American politics. For his part, Lugar has a record of working for the best of the country, even if it means making compromises to get things done, which is not an unreasonable and unrealistic position to have.

I have always been somewhat dismissive of anyone labeling a person or group (political, religious, or otherwise) as “scary.” I’ve heard liberally minded persons call conservatives “scary,” and I’ve listened to conservatively minded call liberals the same. What bothers me about such labels is how they can sabotage intelligent dialog. Saying we fear the “other” is an admission that we don’t understand, and as we all know, fear of the unknown is “phobia.”

Now, I am experiencing a phobia concerning politics and how North America, and perhaps the whole world, are becoming uber-polarized on just about everything political. Whether it is about economics, the environment, education, healthcare, or marriage equality, doesn’t it seem as if our ability to compromise is almost non-existent? Yes, we can argue that certain things are not open to negotiation and are uncompromising—child labor and human trafficking, for example. But have we lost our ability to think creatively so that both sides of an issue are unpacked, looked at with unfiltered eyes, and perhaps replaced by a “compromise?”

Even God was willing to compromise when Abraham negotiated with him...look it up; it’s in Genesis.

My point is that I am tired of the stalemates I see everywhere. The labeling that goes on in efforts to characterize the opposition as less than; I’m tired of it, and it frightens me. I need to go no further than how this vilification of persons has led to the incredibly untenable situation in Uganda and as many as seventy-five other na

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