Replies

Ben, I'm afraid you and I may have to agree to disagree on this one. I know many very fine moderate democrats with whom I have spoken at length, some of whom I consider friends, and none resemble in attitude the extreme liberal you describe. Guess what - they don't like Michael Moore either!

The blue state/red state thing, though useful in practical terms, has taken on a life of its own in ways that just makes the division worse than it already is. Yes, myopic passifist liberals who think we can just engage terrorists in dialogue and get them to see the light are thick upon the ground. And yes, extremist Marxian liberals exist who are too naive to recognize how consistent capitalism is with human nature. And yes, there are plenty of schmucks like Michael Moore around to give moderate democrats a bad name. And I agree that slashing tires and so forth is despicable. But these are not the democrats I know, though they *are* the ones the media loves to showcase, just like it likes to sensationalize negative images of the war in Iraq. The media doesn't give a fig as long as it it gets our attention, and extremists do get our attention, don't they? But just like religious extremists make many moderate republicans uncomfortable, so do the extremist liberals make the moderate democrats uncomfortable from what I've seen.

One of the great challenges in uniting our country again is persuading people to stop painting huge groups of people who have some things - but not all things - in common with the same brush. I invite you to join me in setting a good example by resisting that urge. What I see from right to left and left to right is a bell curve, with lots of moderate, moral, good, patriotic Americans making up most of it. Many of the democratic ones are feeling disenfranchised - they held their noses and voted for Kerry because they are still more philosophically, moderately liberal than conservative, but they were less than enthusiastic about the guy and have understandable concerns about the ability to the Democratic party to see that their interests are adequately represented. Lord knows it abandoned them this time.

YMMV

Respectfully,
Polygirl