I think I became--horrors!--a liberal on account of what was in the news when I first started reading newspapers. At home, there was the civil rights movement, and, in the columns given over to foreign affairs, the war in Vietnam. I formed the idea that the liberals were right to support the former and oppose the latter. By "right," I mean "morally right," so I regarded those on the other side as something worse than just "a guy I disagree with." In the last 40 years they haven't done much to change my view of them.
Of course I haven't entirely approved of the people I vote for, either. It often has had to do with their manner. Ideals rode with high hopes in the front while reason seemed more like a back-seat driver. Humphrey, Wellstone--both arm-waving loud talkers. Something in the middle of my Norwegian soul was made uneasy. But I voted for them, donated money, volunteered, did body English while watching election returns. Couldn't stand their opponents.
And now the other side has adopted my side's discomfiting habits. They have all the wild, effusive, gesticulating shouters. The phrase "conservative temperament" formerly seemed to me a meaningful one with favorable associations--calm, steady, realistic, level-headed, all of that. But who is thus described? Rush Limbaugh? The tea party patriots? The fellows who love their guns? Ann Coulter or the Power Line bloggers? Newt Gingrich?
Or President Obama?
Republicans sometimes refer to themselves as "the grown-ups." It didn't always seem ridiculous but those days are gone.
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