You really are missing your calling. Kerry could use you. Edwards can come up with the vaporous nonstatements pretty good by himself.

"Compassion" is a word that has a specific meaning, for either a conservative or a liberal. But when we start talking about the details of how one actually deals with the problems of your neighborhood, town, city, state and country, then we see the real differences between the two points of view.

To put it bluntly, the "liberal" idea of compassion is to force someone else at gunpoint to "fix" the problem.

"Everyone should have a decent job" is a phrase no one would disagree with, but as a policy statement, it is utterly null, like many such statements that find their way into political speeches. The real question is how does one best insure that everyone has a decent job? Centralized control from the state or Federal government, or letting the free market, i.e. individual decisions, allocate resources?

Is there more opportunity in nations with centralized economies, or nations that have more free economies? The facts speak for themselves, and have done so for a long time.

And trying to set up a dichotomy that suggests that the only alternative for someone out of a job is McDonalds is idiotic. Damn few minimum wage workers are the main support of their families, and you know it.

The original point, which you have been ducking like Neo ducks bullets, was that the division between service and manufacturing is largely artificial, that there is nothing at all to suggest that service industries have to be crappy jobs compared to manufacturing, and that there are a lot of service industries besides flipping burgers.

What I have realized as this conversation has proceeded, is that "manufacturing" jobs is probably just code for "union" jobs, which is probably where the politics comes into this, and why it's an issue in the first place. You do know that plenty of service jobs are also union?