I'm still at the Kucinich site, and I'm reading Mike Berst, an administrator, chastizing a contributor for fostering divisiveness, and this guy really has his head screwed on right. He presents the clearest political picture of this country I've ever seen. I think this is brilliant stuff. This is what non-partisanism is about. I want to excerpt some of his comments here.

"My observation is that each "side" has half of the spiritual picture. The Republicans can hear the music, but they have forgotten the words. The Democrats know the words, but they can't hear the music. The Republicans have lost their reason, the Democrats their heart. A healthy body politic cannot stay divided this way and survive. Not only are the two camps increasingly estranged from each other, but each camp is increasingly estranged form its own spiritual foundation.

Neither of the two sides can win without the other. The Kucinich supporters are motivated by a recognition of this and a willingness to confront and tackle this more so than any other group I have seen on the left. ...

The Democratic party is just packed with "free market" advocates, "personal responsibility" advocates, free trade and globalization advocates and on and on. Nothing wrong with that, although as an old-line Democrat I naturally don't share their views. They are really Republicans. They are in the Democratic party for two reasons - they are intellectuals and professionals, and the Republican party has become the party of dumbed down thuggery, and they can't abide that, and because of their opinions on the hot button issues - gays and abortion mostly. The Republican party is denied the talents and energy of these people.

On the other hand, the Republican party is packed now with have-nots who are voting Republican because of the hot button issues and because of the idiocy and bigotry of the Democratic party leadership. This is highly unstable. Meanwhile the Republican party national leadership and the administration are some sort of Trotskyites who are violating every principle of conservatism. ...

I am saying that the Bush administration is bad for conservatism and because it is bad for conservatism, it is bad for the country. I will always argue against conservatism myself, but so what? The time for arguing my point in the meeting hall has past, because it is the meeting hall itself that is now at risk. I would never want to deny you a seat at the table, nor begrudge you having influence on the direction the country takes, nor question legitimate and fair wins by conservatives. The health of the country depends upon a balance and interplay between principled people honestly holding different opinions.

Millions of Republican voters are going to wake up to the fact that the neo-cons and the Dominionists are not their friends. It may not happen in a month or in a year - and God knows the Democratic party is doing everything it can to keep them in the Republican camp - but it will happen. Millions of Democrats are waking up to the fact that they don't want to belong to the party of snobbery and elitism, of academia and suburbia, of moral relativism and anti-Christianity, and of enlightened free market and free trade economics. They, as I did, signed on to the party of the have-nots, of organized labor, of rural populism, of racial reconciliation, of government activism in public works and the protection of public resources - the party of the common man.

This shake up and re-alignment of the two parties is inevitable. This is the good work, the work that we need to do. In this work you and I are not enemies, we are allies. No one needs to give up their principles to join in this work, merely their partisanship."