Believe me, I don't want Arizona to turn into that place. I think those days of unabashed radical liberalism are long gone just as communism is rapidly fizzling out across the globe. It simply doesn't work and now has too much historical proof of its abject failure. Many of the hard core liberals that put California into the mess it's in today are now leaving the state like rats from a ship (and settling here) and my guess is that they've probably learned their lesson.

What I fear and I see it in your posts and Tom's posts is the assumption that those idiots still have a voice in the world and that we somehow have to fear them as much as terrorists. That simply isn't the case anymore. The neo-cons or authoratarian conservatives (whatever we want to label them) have pushed the center so far right that the true far left has almost nobody left in it. However the vitriol against the left is as if those few were still in command.

A sense of responsibility to give back to society is not abject liberalism. It's simply common sense. It's the same concept as replacing the toilet paper in a shared bathroom when it runs out because it's the human thing to do. It's just Golden Rule basics which all boils down to comfortable survival tactics.

Overdoing fines and fees is just plain wrong but so is having none of them. We simply have to demand balance in our lives and not rest until we get it. It seems though that because of our two party system, the only tool for doing that is continually shifting the balance of power from one side to the other. What a crock but I'll be damned if it doesn't work.

Art