[Overpaid Slacker]

Moneyguy -- A few observations/opinions on your statement that are not necessarily directly resulting from this board, but from political dialogue throughout my life:

"From reading the posts on both sides, it occured to me that the so called "liberal left" tends to question power and leadership while those on the "conservative right" are more likely to believe what they are told more often. Both tend to get emotional about their positions, but the extreme right seems to be more likely (and successful) in using that emotional approach in their arguments."

I believe the Left questions "power" and "leadership" when it's Republican, and more especially when conservative (and Bush is not a "good conservative" IMHO and the HO of many conservatives). The Left was remarkably forgiving of "power" and "leadership" during the Clinton Interregnum. Not that there was much of the latter to forgive.

What the Left doesn't question with nearly the scrutiny the Right does is *government*. This is a fundamental rift between the aisles -- the degree of governmental intervention, its scope, its review and its funding. Not that this is news.

As far as likely to believe what they're told... well, I don't believe that I am, but I'm not going to extrapolate my self-image to other conservatives. What I'll offer is the observation that there seem to be innumerable hokey sources of "information" out there on the Left and pandering to their prejudices and intolerance -- Michael Moore being the current Chief Apostle. The Left seems to be more given to innuendo than analysis; one-line "zingers" that conflate issues or elide over fact gaps to make what they consider to be a point.

Which gets me to the JPFundamental Theory of All Politics (tm). The Left tends to emphasize Truth; the Right tends to focus on Fact. Pleasepleaseplease pay special attention to "tends to" in the foregoing sentence. There are *****bags on both sides of the aisle that will lie and cheat and kick puppies, but where the Truths and the Facts collide are where many of the political battles are fought and it's usually the Left in the Truth mantle and the Right in the Fact trunks.

For example, if for the purposes of this paragraph we can agree that Welfare is not just a scheme to buy votes and keep people perpetually dependent upon the State, you have a Truth behind the policy: The government, through redistribution policies should give some of the wealthy's money to the poor to help them. OK, that's not abhorrent to all but the most draconian conservatives. But Welfare as administered had its issues, which is where the Facts became inconvenient to the Truth: the Welfare system was not merely perpetuating itself but propagating and metastasizing, was fraught with waste and not a little corruption; not surprising given that the gov't was running it. We've now had welfare reform (thank God) but the debates for a decade and during the reform were very instructive. I paraphrase:

Truth: If we stop giving the poor money, we'll hurt them.
Fact: The manner in which we're giving it to them is hurting them, encouraging them not to work and to have more children who then go on the dole.
Truth: Well, then we don't need to give less, we need to give more money, to realize greater benefits.
Fact: We lose more than 50% of the budget to administrative expenses; more money won't make it through the mill to the poor.
Truth: This country was founded on the principles of taking care of the common man, the Statue of Liberty says "Give me your meek..." etc. We have an obligation to our citizens.
Fact: Fine, but not at such terrible expense to everyone else. Give me a system that is actually effective first, and efficient second, and we'll talk about funding it...
Etc. I probably didn't do the Truth crew justice there, but I tried to put forward legitimate points from a position I'm not particularly sympathetic towards.

There are other examples of this, and there may be better nomenclature, but Truth (in a philosophical, almost theoretical purity sense) and Fact (in the nitty-gritty rubber-meets-the-road sense) are the terms that struck me years ago.

As far as emotion, OK both sides can rant, but the Left has got a dead solid lock on hyperbole, hysteria and vapid propagandizing. The BUSH LIED!!!! crew and their convenient, almost Soviet, revisions of what Bush (or Wolfie or Cheney...) "said" and the maelstroms resulting -- c'mon, it's off the reservation. The "No Blood For Oil" silliness, exceeded only by "Bush=Nazi" deep thinkers is the coin of the Realm for the Lefties' "positions". The hard Left is insanely intolerant, escalating even ordinary course disagreements into unhinged paroxysms of bile and rage. There is a reason for Howard Dean's Angry Man shpiel, and for Gore's absolutely lunatic behavior lately (and I'll assume it's not b/c he's off his meds) -- it's what "sells" to much of the Left.

Having escalated current political "dialogue" into such stratospheric heights, honestly, what MORE could the Left say if Bush abolished Congress, shot the SCOTUS and invaded Argentina for its oil? He's already *that* bad according to the irrational, emtional fumings of the Left.

In my experience, the Right (by and large... we do have our odd Aunts in the attic) doesn't get emotional per se, but gets very very intense -- and the best of them do it in an dispassionate, devastating manner. Think: Scalia dissent. The *response* to that is frequently a visceral, emotional reaction, but the archetypal presentation is fact-as-first-principle driven.

JP