Even to the casual observer, it is apparent that we in the United States are in a time during which national public policy agreement on most substantive issues is difficult to achieve.  We have submitted in these pages that the reason for this impasse is that a chasm has opened within the electorate between competing visions for the Country and the Federal Government's role in it.  We further assert that, between these competing visions, compromise is impossible.  We assert that we must choose.  In a several-part series of Framing the Issue, we explore the Battle Lines.

Natural Rights vs. Positive Rights

From our point of view, it has been ever clear that the Left has many things wrong.  More recently, the vexing question has become:  why does the Left have everything wrong?  We have educators who attempt to indoctrinate rather than initiate, representatives who pass sweeping laws with price tags everyone knows to be vastly understated, a Supreme Court justice who looks to South Africa for the ideal in a Constitution, and a current president whose instincts seem uniformly backwards to the given situation or moment.

 The Left's prescription for poverty is to institutionalize it, for justice is to commit robbery, for national strength is to unilaterally yield, for prosperity is