(My thanks to Kevin and all the kind folks at American Street for letting me get this off of my chest–Emma)

Compromise (n): to adjust or settle by mutual concessions.

So I’m disconsolately wandering around blogtopia (ysctp!), and I’m seeing a lot of lefties talking about finding ways to compromise with Republicans in order to get back into power. Find common ground with them, I am told, and we can win back the electorate.

All right. Let’s try this exercise:

1. Gay Rights. The folks who now speak for the Republican party demand that gays be shoved back into the legal and social closet; at the loony fringe, they want them exterminated. Jim deMint, senator from South Carolina, supports a platform barring gays from teaching school. John Thune supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Both these gentlemen were handily elected by constituencies that presumably approved of their positions.

Now, the contention is that out there somewhere there is a mass of silent Republicans who disapprove of this extremism and would happily accept some k ind of middle-of-the-road solution.

WHAT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD BETWEEN FULL CITIZENSHIP AND SECOND CLASS STATUS?

2. Abortion. The same Republicans who support second class citizneship for gay Americans also advocate the outlawing of abortion even in cases of incestuous rape or danger to the life of the mother; Senator deMint advocates the execution of doctors who provide abortions. These people favor giving full citizenship rights to a cell mass, and, incidentally, turning women from citizens into walking incubators, powerless to affect their own destiny, always and forever defined and controlled by the cell mass they could be carrying.

WHAT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD BETWEEN A FREE WOMAN AND AN INDENTURED SERVANT?

3. Religion. The hugely powerful Jesus-freak wing of the Republican party wants to institutionalize fundamentalist Protestantism as a state religion. Mandatory Bible study. Teach creationism instead of science. Accept the Bible as the court of last resort, even if its answer contradicts all physical evidence. Actually, especially if it contradiccts physical evidence.

WHAT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD BETWEEN A REASONING HUMAN BEING AND A FANATIC?

What should be clear by now is that we are not in a political fight; we are in a full-throttle cultural war. These people want to drag all of us back to the fourteenth century. They LIKE the idea of a world where every thing and every one had their allotted place, where you were certain of heaven if you followed the strictures of Church and King. They don’t care that their lives might be brutal and nasty; they have a promise of eternal rewards in heaven.

That is the mindset we are up against and I, for one, have no desire to compromise with it. These are the people who are the fuel of the Republican party, and I want no part of them. And I wan even less a part of those of you who are considering giving in to them in order to grab a tiny piece of a shoddy brass ring.

There is another definition for compromise: a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial.

But Emma–I can just hear you wailing–we’re are not talking about the fanatics, but the moderate Republicans! All I can say is that the moderate Republicans seem to be more interested in keeping their party in power than in voting their consciences or their morals. The only ones who spoke up were either those long out of power or those who were disgraced and had nothing to lose. The Great White Hope of the Republicans, John McCain, decided that keeping his ass in the Senatorial chair was worth kissing the boots of those who smeared and humiliated his family. Like McCain, all those moral, ethical, moderate Republicans swallowed hard and pulled the lever for their guy.

We need to start thinking not in political terms but in cultural ones. That’s how the soulless, amoral, unchristian leadership of the Republican party manages to motivate 22% of Americans to vote against their self-interest and for “moral issues.” We need to motivate those who don’t want to live in a half-assed science-fiction dystopia. We need to show those folks who sat out the election why it is important to get up and into the voting booth. We need to articulate clearly why our way of life is infinitely preferable to theirs.

We need to stop thinking about what we can do to attract Republicans and work on attracting new Democrats…and Greens…and Libertarians…and anyone, of any political stripe, who hates what the loons are doing to America.