Perhaps I should preface that question with what is a name in the first place! A name is merely a label we give someone or something. For example, most people know me as Keith, the name given me by my parents. But I’m also known to some as brother and other’s who I’ve served with in the military know me as “Doc” and there are others who know me as “The Chief.”

We also know things by the name we give them. For example, Kool-Aid is a delicious drink served up to kids on a hot summer’s day. Thanks to the Reverend Jim Jones it’s known as a poison. He made up copious amounts of it, laced it with cyanide and coaxed some of his Jonestown followers to partake of it. Those that wouldn’t drink freely, he forced them to drink it. As a result of Reverend Jones, the name Kool-Aid also became the label for a corrupt, rotten or doomed philosophy.

So we know from a historical context that a name is label or identifier that we give to someone or something. We know that someone or something can be known by several names and we know that sometimes meanings of names can be changed and they can be changed for a host of different reasons. Sometimes the course is natural like the progression of a person from son to husband then father, grandfather and so on. In some cases the name change can be manipulated.

This is especially true in the political arena. Take any of the current political dramas unfolding before our very eyes. It just depends on your orientation or point of view whether a person is a freedom fighter or a terrorist. A look at the current global economic crisis and government’s response to it, is it a stimulus package or pork. Other popular terms that are often bandied about in the political arena include words like partisan, non-partisan bipartisan and post-partisan.

We know that in political terms, a partisan is someone who strictly adheres to a political ideology. They hold to it tenaciously and apply it across the board to a host of issues. We use terms like conservative and liberal to label or name the two ideological camps. Bipartisanship takes the term partisan and gives it an interesting twist. The idea behind this label is that there is some sort of middle ground where the two opposing sides can compromise and work together.

In reality, this never happens. What really happens is members who have identified themselves as being of one particular stripe or another don’t really adhere wholeheartedly to the principles of their particular affiliation. For example, in America during the 1980’s there was a thing once known as a conservative democrat. They belonged by affiliation to one particular stripe but their personal ideology, or lack there of, was in conflict with the party affiliation. They forsook their affiliation and voted along with the Reagan Tax cuts and military build up. They became known as the “Reagan Democrats!”

In more recent times, the opposite has happened. Now in the name of bipartisanship it is the right of the political spectrum that has left its roots. These days we have what is known as the Republican in Name Only or (RINO). What they in fact are is non-ideological republicans who for the sake of that magic word “bipartisanship” have caved in to the other side’s way of thinking. In short, the term bipartisanship, which many believe to mean both sides meeting in the middle, in fact really means that one side, or enough members of one stripe forsaking their ideological or party affiliation.

That leaves us with an interesting term that is all the rage these days, post-partisanship. The current American President describes himself as being a post-partisan politician. But just what does he mean by the word? By dissecting the word, what it should mean is the end of partisanship or that the practice of partisanship is over. So post-partisanship does not mean the same thing as being non-partisan. However, that is the impression that most people have when this word is so loosely and carelessly bandied about. But if the new president meant he was going to be non-partisan, he should have just said so from the get-go, shouldn’t he?

So if post-partisanship is not the same thing as being non-partisan but, in fact means the ending of partisanship. That leaves us with an interesting question. Just how do you end partisanship? Because our education system is so lacking, I feel it important that we first review. Partisan means strict adherence to a set of political principles, non-partisan means no adherence to any or all principles and bipartisan means the capitulation of enough of the members of one affiliation to bring a victory to the opposition. Then naturally post-partisanship must mean that the ideological war is over and one side has defeated the other.

But is the war really over just because one side says so? In the minds of many today, it is! This way of thinking, or lack of it, goes back to the free love philosophy of the 1960’s and manifested itself most clearly in the popular “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came” antiwar slogan of the time. Recently we’ve seen this way of thinking resurface in the “debate is over” argument when it comes to the question of manmade global warming. Now we’re seeing it rear its ugly head again in the manifestation of this new term called post-partisanship. In the latter, it merely means that the liberals have claimed victory over the conservatives.

To be sure, they did win the election. But did they do it honestly? In places like the uber-liberal enclaves of San Francisco and Boston, the answer is yes but in the conservative rural areas of the Midwest, south and west, the answer is a resounding no. In the latter, the democrats won by outwardly behaving and sounding more conservative than the supposedly conservative republican candidates they ran against.

But back to the, is the war really over because one side says so. Not hardly! Just ask the Japanese and the Germans following WWII, how did the war really end? Did it miraculously conclude merely because the U.S. and their allies declared victory or did it end because the other side was utterly defeated on the field of battle. Now compare that with the never ending war between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Ask yourself why that war never seems to end? It’s certainly not because the Israelis declared victory and walked off the battlefield. It seems to me we’ve tried that tactic several times and we seem doomed to repeat it again.