re: #451 Renaissance_Man

It’s very interesting. I had dinner with some Republican friends the other evening. A few years ago they would joke about the fact that they are Republicans in a pretty liberal area. We would have mostly good-natured arguments about economics (they’re socially fairly liberal and in any case we didn’t really get into that, live and let live etc.). Basically we used to get on well in an “agree to disagree” kind of way, and mostly we still do.

I really noticed, the other night, however, that they seemed to be circling the wagons. They made a couple of pretty mean-spirited comments about prominent liberals and various recent news items. I got the impression they were trying to justify their political position: “see, liberals are arrogant/self-centered/unpleasant people, that’s why it’s OK to be a Republican”. I mean, I think Ann Coulter is a pretty unpleasant person, but I wouldn’t slag her off in the context of having dinner with these folks, because what’s the point of being needlessly divisive?

I’m beginning to think that a lot of Republicans have backed themselves into a philosophical corner. So much of their platform is now logically inconsistent, the only way they can keep any kind of coherence is to basically blame everything on evil liberals (either that, or abandon the whole edifice, which I can absolutely appreciate requires immense intellectual courage).