...but we all - red and blue alike - can learn something from this article.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/156/story_15629_1.html
I was waiting to go on a conservative talk radio show and heard the host say that John Kerry and his supporters "have no God" because they don't stand up to evil. He went on to claim that "even the mention of God terrifies them." As for religious people who go to church regularly but vote Democratic, he said, "I see them as sort of phonies."
Then I came on, and his question to me was, "Why do secular people think we're all a bunch of intolerant people?"
I've heard similarly clueless statements from liberals who simultaneously talk about the need for fairness then compare the Bush administration to the Taliban or the Nazis.
On both sides, discourse now moves swiftly from disagreement into demonizing, from contrast to caricature. The worst motives are always assumed. Both camps have polemicists who win popularity, ratings, and book sales by devising ever more clever ways of ripping the eyelids off their opponents. We all know the visceral satisfactions of hanging out with our home-team blogs and watching the TV or radio stations that fit our worldview. Our politicians and pundits happily supply us with the voodoo dolls and the pins. But we'd be smarter not to use them.
I'm not saying the conflicting values aren't profound and important. But I am saying that if we choose to find the legitimate underpinnings of our ideological opponents' arguments, we can. It may not be as much fun, but it is more patriotic.