As annoying as the incessant media coverage of the Shutdown might be, we really need to look, watch, and learn what is truly going on. Thomas Paine penned some wisdom we would do well to follow. Time to bring the hypocrites and the hypocrisy to light.

"Yet panics (crises), in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world." Thomas Paine, Crisis 1776