I made my point on this "balance" issue in a response to a different thread.

I don't consider "balance" to be a primary virtue in and of itself. There are too many issues in the real world where there just aren't two acceptable or valid sides to the issue.

My political concerns go a lot deeper than the candidates. When you are electing someone from a political party and philosophy, you are not getting just the candidate, but the entire party insinuating itself into the upper levels of government. Kerry is one thing. Who would Kerry put in charge in the cabinet? Another Madeline Albright? I know who Bush picked. Oddly, nobody seems to consider this an issue. I am also hearing surprisingly little about things like Supreme Court selections.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of the early 1960s. Now it's the sort of party that a socialist/collectivist would be quite comfortable in, and many of them are. The Democrats stand for centralization of almost every major government function, and quite a few private ones. An example: for all the smoke and mirrors their candidates put up on health care, I know damn well they have their eyes on a single-payer system, and most of them have said so in off hours. The same goes for their attitudes on many other things. They talk what sells to their more moderate constituents, but to each other, they know what they really think.

Another example: Anyone who thinks Kerry is really pro-military is ignoring three decades of behavior that shows him to be anything but. And this is typical of the entire party leadership.

At the heart of the philosophical wing of the organized Democratic Party squats the ghost of Karl Marx, and all the indignant howls of protest don't change that. It is highly instructive to look at many of the leftist leaders of the 60s and see where they ended up.

The Republicans, while not at this level, aren't anything to brag about either. Goldwater must be spinning in his grave, and even Reagan would probably be unhappy with the "compassionate conservative" large-government approach. Everyone knows that for both parties, the definition of "compassion" is taking someone else's money and then passing it to the needy with great fanfare and self-promotion.

In my more cynical moments, I see it as a choice between two parties moving toward socialism, centralized control of citizens, and massive government. The difference is that the Republicans are coasting, and sometimes on rare occasions even applying the brakes. The Democrats have the accelerator pressed to the floorboards.