[Overpaid Slacker]

I'm w/ you Tabs. The elitist approach and the contempt w/ which they marginalize and demonize those with whom they disagree is their undoing. There's very little room to agree to disagree w/ the most fanatical (and therefore most likely to be in the spotlight) liberals.

I don't think liberal ideas or ideals are necessarily "wrong" but I don't wholeheartedly subscribe to them, so I'm a heretic and must be burned.

A more temperate dialogue (w/o knee-jerk accusations of Nazism, fascism, intolerance, stupidity ... all of which are struck-dumb-ironic when used by liberals to silence their adversaries) would be beneficial.

In our microcosm here, there are plenty of those on the Left who do not deign to cast their pearls before we conservative swine, or throw ad hominem barbs like so much ink to cover defeat. THESE are the guys with whom I've had some great and enlightening exchanges -- even though we'd probably never "agree" on 80% of stuff.

Liberalism without the elitism bullshyt (which really comes across like insecurity IMHO) is a worthy ideology. It's its unskilled practitioners and their scorched-earth, polarizing chiaroscuro that sully it.

And, yes, I'd lay the same epitaph at the doorsteps of those conservatives that demean their ideology through their means. Think of Ann Coulter as the conservative mirror to most of liberal, shrill (read mainstream) commentary.

JP