Yes, I know, Ron. It was my impression that the topic had just taken an interesting new turn, however, and I was talking on the basis of that, not on the basis of what had gone before. I am speaking here as a philosopher, not a politician, and I am not all that interested in the endless, divisive, efforts of both the Right and the Left to each prove that the other is totally wrong about everything.

They are both deeply chauvinistic and pretentious in espousing such prejudicial attitudes toward one another, and they both tend toward absolutism when they do so.

I say that despite the fact that I am instinctively well on the Left. That does not blind me to the fact that the Left, as well as the Right, is fond of posturing grandly, and deluding itself about its own supposed moral purity.

And that? That is what I call the "little Hitler" within. The ego, in other words.

The definition of ego, in spiritual terms, is this: It's the one who thinks, "I am apart from all others. I'm alone. Everyone else is either an opportunity or a threat. I must find a way to get what I want and survive and WIN, and hopefully DOMINATE, because I am NUMERO UNO. I fear, I desire, I want, I cling to, I hate when I don't get what I'm after, and I fight for it."   That, in a nutshell, is what causes all the pain and trouble on this Earth. It can be found percolating busily in both the Right and the Left at any given time, which is why I'd much rather be a philosopher than a politician! ;-)

A philosopher is willing to confront his own darkness, see his own struggle reflected in all others, and attempt to heal it. A politician is not willing to do that...his business is divide and separate....to yell about someone else's darkness and to attack it...to conquer and plunder.

That's how we get into our wars. Mad raving egos, searching for supremacy.

It's also how we generate an awful lot of heat on this forum much of the time, and very little light.