[Superman]

I'm buying some of that but not all of it. I'd assert, for instance, that it is possibly the Right that gloms onto a "truth" while the left focuses on fact. I notice that the Right seems to be leaning, these days, on stuff like messages from God and applying moral "truths" into statutes. But, I accept your assertions too, since these 'label' exercises often help us to dissect and understand stuff better.

I'd also like to make another point. I was a government worker once, and I still am serving a public agency, albeit for a private employer. I do believe in government, and call bull**** on anyone who says they do not. Everyone I know drinks water and uses roads. And a myriad of other services you all benefit from. The degree to which government impacts, and protects, and benefits your lives is astonishing and here's another thing....you cannot avoid it. Government is here to stay, and we must rely on it for some very important stuff. There is plenty of stuff that private business has NO business doing, cannot do and will never do, and could never to as well as a public agency. Someone's going to challenge me on this, so let's just throw out antitrust and other regulations that directly regulate business behavior. If you suggest we use private businesses to do this, you are a KOOK. And a naive and/or indoctrinated one to boot.

Okay, the thing I want to report here that is a view from the inside (inside goverment, inside liberal thinking), is some of the reason why liberals seem to blindly support government. You see, we know government is not perfect. We know humans make mistakes. We know that organizations take on a life of their own and spin out of control. We know about the shortfalls of government. But we vigorously protect her, sometimes refusing to discuss the administrative problems still to be solved. The reason? It's partly because when government comes under attack from the Right (this is the case constantly, particularly in the budget cycle since opposing a law or suggesting its repeal can and will get you booted from office but starving the office for funding works just as well and is less visible), the Right is not trying to make it work better. If the Right can eliminate a law or an office, it will. But it usually cannot. So it has to settle for a strategy of making that office run very poorly. If this goes on long enough, then that office will be ripe for elimination.

I've seen this happen many many many many many many many times. The republicans are seen my us liberals as anarchists. And they are very good at it. And government mandates and administrative tools are like freedoms and liberties. They are put in place through valiant effort, but it takes just a little mistake to eliminate them. You don't get them back. So, when the Right politicians come calling to a government office, they're not trying to make things better. Indeed, knowing that they cannot simply repeal a law, or eliminate an office (without serious voter backlash), their goal coming into an issue is to make the office ineffective. Usually by decreasing the resources (funding) that the office gets, or increasing the activities it is required to pursue. For example the conservative legislative committee will hear a horror story, and hold a hearing to ask the agency. It will feign surprize and indignation at some of what it hears. Then it will pass a new law mandating that the agency follow the following ADDITIONAL steps to ensure the horror story does not repeat. Nevermind that the agency has already eliminated that possiblity through simpler and less expensive means.

Okay, so now the workload of the agency has increased. The next step for those conservative legislators is to further vent their anger at the agency by cutting funding.

So no. There is no honest, respectful, cooperative dialogue across the "aisle" frequently. The liberals are not willing to come to that table. Because the liberals would assume it is a meal table, but in reality it is a guillotine table with sympathetic-looking executioners. That's the game, and we are not coming to play.