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According to the urban dictionary “preaching to the choir” means you are trying to make believers out of people who already believe, or convince people who are already convinced. That’s what we see from the vast majority of today’s politicians.

More and more candidates are interested in energizing their base rather than convincing voters with a different viewpoint that they have the right or the best answers. Perhaps they are way ahead of me on how to get elected given so much voter intransigence and appropriate suspicion, but I’m sure that’s not the way to cure the nation’s ills.

The candidates frequently counter this observation by saying they have to get elected to do anything, but all too often after they are elected they find they are captured by their own one-sided campaign rhetoric and trapped by the unquenchable thirst to get reelected.  It’s very difficult to give up the power of today’s state-centric thinking and the fawning admiration of the masses.

The issue of illegal immigration is a perfect example. The Democratic candidates are making believe that this is no problem whatsoever while the Republicans are making believe that every illegal immigrant is big problem. The truth, of course lies somewhere between the two positions, but that is dangerous political ground; therefore, no one is occupying it and offering solutions, they are merely busy defending the status quo or radical solutions, both of which are indefensible.

When you add it all up, the issue of illegal immigration has 10 or 20 important positive and negative impacts on the nation, but no one is willing to addresses them as policy issues.

This is not the place for me to argue the pro and cons of these impacts or ways to promote the positive and mitigate the negative. I will give you credit for natural intelligence knowing that if you could just put your emotional reactions aside and think it through you could certainly put together a list of things that any reasonable society would address. 

Now ask yourself this, if you can do it why can’t our political leaders? The reason is that they are running for office; they are not running to actually fix anything.