Somewhere in the process of growing up, I learned to problem solve, and after being married to the same man for 37 years, raising children, and owning my own business for 20 years, I am pretty good at it. One of the things I always try to do is to sort out the core problem from all the symptoms, because until you work on the core problem, all the other stuff is sitting on a pretty flimsy foundation.

And as I think about all the problems in this country and trace back to their core, they all seem to start at the same place...lack of ethics. A blurring of the lines between right and wrong.

We saw it in our foray into Iraq. Instead of concentrating on what was at the time, a worldwide effort to squash Al Qaeda, an unethical President used the pretense of fighting terrorists to advance his own agenda.

We saw it in the beginnings of the financial crisis, way back when an unscrupulous industry, aided and abetted by greedy politicians, dismantled the regulatory protections that were enacted to prevent exactly what ultimately occurred.

We saw it back when President Reagan, one of the most loved Presidents ever, destroyed the unions to the detriment of the middle class, and enacted tax decreases for his friends (the rich and powerful) which have hurt the poor, and contributed mightily to the class warfare we are now experiencing.

We see it every day in Congress, as our elected officials bow to the lobbyists over and over again to do the bidding of the privileged class, as they use and abuse those less able to care for themselves. This whole horrific health care debacle can be laid at the feet of the unethical politicians, and unethical citizens who are so unwilling to provide a safety net for everyone.

There are many, many other examples, both back in history, and here today. No one has to think very hard to add more to the list.

But we are trying to fix the symptoms, rather than address the core problem. We will never be the country we are capable of being until we address the primary issue that keeps us from building a strong country...lack of ethics.

Both parties are guilty of it. There is plenty of blame to go around. But the reason I blame the republicans more is because they make a big, big show of being the "moral" party the one with the moral superiority. The party that houses the Christian right, those who are supposed to be asking with every decision "WWJD?"

That is not to excuse the dems. We could, if we chose to, reclaim the moral high ground by getting rid of the lobbyists, including the trial lawyers association. But, we don't. We could change the rules so that members of Congress can't go off on boondoggles that waste precious money, and it should be an easy feat for the Congress to enact rules that rollback their medical benefits to match those of a typical small business. But we don't.

Again, it would be easy to come up with dozens of ways for our leaders to work toward being an ethical  country, with or without the aid of the republicans. But we don't.

And, worse yet, We the People, don't demand it. We blame the other party and avert our eyes while our own people do the same things.

So, the problem has been identified. If we were going to lay out a game plan for how we are going to address it, what would it look like? Where would we start? And what are you willing to do to make it happen?