House Speaker John Boehner has stated repeatedly that the
Democrats got their tax hikes in January and so there will be no
more tax hikes. Zero. Nada. The meaning of Boehnerís words is
that the Republicans have compromised once and so they donít
need to compromise again. They gave in once, so now they are
justified in their intransigence. Boehner, however, fails to
understand something important about democracy ó that it
requires compromise all the time. Compromise is not something
that happens only once ó only when your backs are against the
wall and you have no choice. Compromise is the way competing
factions reconcile their differences in order to craft solutions
for the common good. That we have different factions pursuing
different interests is an inevitable fact of life, especially in
a vast continental nation that is a melting pot of many peoples
and economic interests. In fact, faction was a danger that the
Founding Fathers were particularly wary of. They worried that
unless the government was structu