from their point of view it is not lying, it is "doing whatever it takes to do the right thing". they are justified, because in their eyes their enemies are soooooo evil. and if their enemies aren't evil enough, they have to put words in their mouths or thoughts in their minds to make them sufficiently evil to justify their tactics. once this snake starts feeding on itself, it spirals out of control. (how's that for a mixed metaphor, eh?) political hysteresis = intellectual hysteria. you aren't the only one here who's noticed how they accuse you of believing things you don't, and then attack you for denying it.

conservative/liberal, right/left, socialist/fascist, it's all bullshit. like the man said,

"Labels are important. If you call someone something he isn't, then you can blame him for being something he's not".

this is why (according to the winger meme) liberals don't just want more regulation, they want everything regulated to the max. it is why liberals (again, in the winger conception) aren't just wary of the motives of business, they must loathe and hate business and businessmen and seek to eliminate all private enterprise;i.e, there is no middle ground between bolshevik and libertarian, no intermediate to mao and rand. to take wingers at their word, liberals don't just want a counterbalance to capital and labor, business and government, collective harmony and individual freedom. this is what all reasonable people want, whether liberal or conservative, the philosophical differences are only in means, not ends. no, according to the wingers, liberals want to turn society into a hive of termites. and guess who are the only ones who see this and can protect us from these collectivist zombiecrats--
you guessed it...

against this kind of single-minded ferocity, reason is useless and discourse is for sissies. only ridicule is effective, and the most effective ridicule of all is to use their own rhetorical extremism against them. they are generally too carried away with their own self-righteousness to see what you're doing and figure out you're just making fun of them.

so stop trying to reason with them. just expose their contradictions and ignore their rants, and they will make asses of themselves as they are doing on this board with their sputtering, shivering rages. they go through one of these
conniptions every time they lose a war, or an election.