I think, of course, that these labels have been scurrilously compromised. A conservative by definition is someone who seeks to preserve or conserve the current ways of doing business, which is usually translated as fostering business interests, while a liberal focuses their attention or issues of individual freedom and social mechanisms that will increase the opportunity available to individuals.

In the course of politics since the Clinton administration, venom and divisiveness have been entered into the American political field in amounts not seen since the bitter campaigns of the nineteenth century, when fisticuffs and bullying at the polls was an ordinary event.

But the insanity of process perversion has reached new heights in the last couple of decades; a civil war of verbal harangues, rhetoric, ad hominem abuse and windy, circular rhetoric has grown up in the land. People who once argued issues have taken on the demeanor of Rottweilers in both camps; I have succumbed to the urge myself, when discussing that bow-legged SOB in the Oval Orifice, to abandon analysis, irked beyond measure by the endless waves of twisted PR and bald falsehoods in support of an agenda I don't like in the first place. Of course, it is always easy to blame.

The real help Mudcat Conservatives need is in clarifying their core ideas, and why they think they are of value to the social matrix. They are easily stirred to broad, sweeping condemnations, and even scurrilous obscenities aimed at attacking persons instead of addressing the opinions offered. This lack of respect for the opinions of others is the first tragedy of polemic and false PR. You can't debate opinions in a field of falsified facts, really.

A