<...One the other hand, Epicurus (the democrat) taught the good should be sought and an ethic that insists that each individual had the obligation to live in such a way as to obtain as much pleasure and little pain as possible. IF each individual behaved in this way, inflicting pain on others would be unthinkable---unless he were thinking that long ago of todays mean spirited Republicans.

If the Democratic Party actually thought this way instead of being a load of closed Marxists, all our lives would be better. Just because the kind of person who likes to smoke weed and stare at the fluffy clouds tends to vote Democrat doesn't mean that Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton think this way. For God's sake, please don't confuse the small-d "democrat" with the organization that calls itself the modern Democratic Party.

You sound to me to be a little smarter than one of those parrots that drops terms like "mean spirited" left and right when some leftist pokes it into his head on a TV show. The misuse of this term is beginning to piss me off. Definition of "mean-spirited:" Resentment of continuously being forcibly looted to support other people's political ambitions. This is like calling a slave "mean spirited" when he takes off for the North and leaves the plantation owner a hand short for the harvest. Cripes, the way people talk you'd almost think that the Democrats were spending money out of their OWN pockets.

The deliberate destruction of language is a major feature of totalitarianism.

Just out of curiosity, and with absolutely no insult intended, did you volunteer for military service or were you drafted?