The headline reads: “Snowe Laments the Death of Compromise.” Not true.

There isn’t anything left to compromise on.

The lesson that Sen. Olympia Snowe never learned was that she compromised and moderated until she was a leftist herself. She never got any long-term quid pro quo. The progressive left in the last 50 years, 33 with Snowe’s help, has systematically eroded a once proud, moral, hardworking citizenry chip by chip, accepting each compromise and coming back to implement more of its agenda every time.

The pillars that sustained our country — freedom of speech and religion, the family and “rugged individualism — all have been compromised away to be something very different, in the name of freedom, of course.

We are all much freer, now. Free to kill our unborn children, free to spend our grandchildren’s future earnings, free of God and his moral strictures, free to break the law coming here and getting free support. We are free to choose not to work and get all sorts of government support.

We have freely compromised away our definitions of what constitutes a family, a marriage, religion, morality and speech. The hedonistic approach of the progressives has succeeded. Anything goes, if it feels good, do it. There is no sense worrying about tomorrow, live it up today. It’s all we get, so take it all.

What’s left is a country that is bankrupt, not only financially, but morally and socially. It is said that we must stand for something, or we’ll fall for anything. I believe, sadly, we have fallen and can’t get up. How far have we fallen? An unwed college coed recently testified before Congress that her contraception should be paid for by someone else, and the president agreed.

Greg Theriault, Skowhegan