Rich Galen went to lunch (and we’re in favor of lunch here), and …

The part of the conversation I did get was this: The two parties no longer consider each other to be political opponents – each aiming for the same goal but choosing differing paths to get there.

Each of the two parties now considers the other to be not just a political enemy, but an enemy of everything the other believes in.

We have traded political ideology for political religiosity.

We no longer have to defend our position with statistics and logic. We now defend out position as being correct because we believe it to be correct. …

When I was on Bill Maher last year, we got into a discussion about global warming. The largely youngish crowd was poised to boo and hiss as I talked about the lack of scientific evidence or whatever.

What I said was: We’re having the wrong discussion. What we should be discussing isn’t whether global warming is real or man-made or whatever; what we should be discussing is: Is it better to put more garbage into the atmosphere or less garbage into the atmosphere?

This type of discussion takes global warming out of the realm of sacred doctrine and makes each of us look at the real world as it really is.

Same goes for the economy.

We are stuck in a medieval crusade between those who believe we should spend more to generate jobs and those who believe we should cut more to reduce the deficit.

This, too, is the wrong discussion because most of us never took more than the minimum three-hour course: Econ 113 and we only know how to spell Keynes because we think it’s cool to know how to spell Keynes and the only other person we ever knew named “Maynard” was Maynard G. Krebs from the Dobie Gillis show. …

The fight-to-the-death should not a choice between spending and austerity – that hasn’t worked in Greece or Spain and it won’t work here.

The discussion should be this: Can we find a way to spend the money we are already spending in more productive ways? And how what can we do to raise the largest possible number of Americans who are at or below the poverty line into the middle class?

We have to stop blindly defending our position and start looking for solutions – some of which may lie in the other guy’s beliefs.

Idealistic, to say the least. The zero-sum-game nature of politics today, the fact that too many politicians make politics their career, and the fact that government does too much and taxes too much makes Galen’s wish a dream. Add to the fact that the parties have a particular brand of economics imbedded into them since the 1980s — smaller government (at least that’s what they claim) Republicans and big-government Democrats — and never the twain shall meet.