I have to agree with Mary in These Parts and John Hardly in a kind of mixed combination, in that I miss the thoughtful, well reasoned conservative voice. I had very little logic, but took to it, and even just the top ten logical errors (#1, the false dichotomy) threshes most political discourse. Cynical meaningless sound-bites and point-scoring tend to be the rule.

   I tend to call myself an old-fashioned liberal, although I never understood the U.S. Soviet-sympathy-syndrome. As an artist, I just don't get it, the free expression problem was too big for me. I can't do the bleeding heart tag either--I believe in doing the right thing in cold blood, colder the better. Sentimental pleas, heart-warming stories, feel-good stuff that brings us all closer together--that stuff makes my skin crawl.

I don't know about progressive--I don't intellectually believe history is moving along toward some utopia, but on the other hand, pragmatically, some things have clearly moved ahead, and so, what the hell.

But I find that the things that bother me most about liberals are a fairly safe topic for discussion with my conservative friends, I do pretty well with that.