America has a chance to show the world what a kind, inclusive society looks like and we refuse to rise to the occasion.  This country was founded on the ideas of a period named The Enlightenment.  People were "enlightened" about science and economics and government and literature and religion.  They had ideas about governments for the governed not the monarch.  They had ideas about education for all.  Chaucer writes in English instead of French so the masses could read literature.  Thomas Hobbs talks about the consent of the governed and the rights of individuals.  It was radical.  It was fresh.  It was liberal.  It was the kindling for this inclusive American society.  A place where people from many different backgrounds and philosophies commune to "create a more perfect union."  

Instead what we have created is tribalism.  A government that is deadlocked, broken.  This isn't what it looks like -- not what Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft envisioned.  It looked like our Representatives bringing the ideas of those who voted for them to Congress and hammering out laws that looked like what we collectively wanted.  Not what one group wanted, but  combined, communicative, compromising law that, while not exactly what I wanted, contains my ideas.  

I recently watched a show -- can't recall but maybe a Fareed Zakaria special -- that claimed our Congress was exactly like that.  The Senators and Congresspeople got along.  They were friends and coworkers, there was camaraderie on the floor.  And, not surprisingly, they got things done.  One report credited Newt Gingrich for the gridlock in DC.  He felt that partisanship was the way to get things done.  Nothing has been done since he was Speaker -- not. one. thing.