The conversation seems to have entered a somewhat recursive phase. In your second installment you're describing a bit of "standard canon", about how we think that the right sees us. What's the next level?...from the right, I think, a critiique of our standard canon that itself embodies their standard canon.

It's turtles all the way down.

You might remember (poor bastard) my desire over the years to understand the conservative mind, and that I believe that it's important to understand the psychology of conservatism. I'm hardly alone in that. The latest in decades of scientific studies of the subject is a paper by Oxley and Smith et al, of the University of Nebraska, titled ''Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits''. The synopsis is fascinating:

Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.

(Think back to September 12, 2001: We saw hyersensitivy to threat as many people, disproportionately conservative, were deeply freaked out at the thought that the threat may come from any direction at all, and how can we possibly defend ourselves????? We're all going to die!!!!)

This line of enquiry seems to infuriate Tom, who is adamant that there's no such thing as a "conservative mind". I'm not the only one who would beg to differ.

Based on this and much more, including personal experience, I've come to the conclusion that we'll never be able to bridge the chasm and settle our differences through intellectual argument alone. Psychology matters, it underlies and powers the superficially rational arguments.

And right now, we're focusing on a powerful clue: "I want my America back!". It's certainly an expression of selfishness, and expresses an almost childish petulance..."gimme, it's mine and you can't have it!", but I've come to see it as expressing a lot more than that.

Think about how deeply personal a construction that is. The America in question is not an abstraction read in a history book (and conservatives insist, in any case, that history books are universally anti-American). It's the America of personal experience.

There's a video from the Summer of Loons last year, you've no doubt seen it but I couldn't find it on the EweTube, showing a blond woman in her late 30s wailing in inconsolable grief, as if at the loss of a parent, crying the signature phrase "I want my America back!".

If it's a personal America, the earliest "edition" of America it could be is the America of the late 1970s or early 80s. Ever since I saw that video and realized the significance, I've wracked my brain trying to figure out what was so wonderful about that time. Ronald Reagan? To a child?

A second datum holds powerful significance. I asked a man born in 1927, someone so far to the right he feels like tea partiers are catching up to him, to define America's golden age. As do most people asked this question, he cited a decade: The 1930s. I was astonished, and blurted out "The Depression?" Atilla's never been a dummy and remains sharp as a tack at 83, so he understood my astonishment and explained that it was because people "had a better attitude back then". Postive attitude, upbeat, unflagging spirits, cooperation and helpfulness.

Do you see it?

The golden age is childhood, when adults do their damnedest to shield children from the ugly realities of the world. When everyone a child knows has a good attitude. When the teaching of right and wrong is clear and unambiguous and comfortingly reliable. When the relativistic pace of subjective time in childhood makes it seem as if the golden days will last forever, and when the future stretches out to a distant horizon of infinite possibility.

That poor blond woman was indeed grief-stricken at the loss of a parent, a symbolic parent memorializing a moment in time.

I'm afraid, though, it's all downhill from there. The world really does go to hell in a handbasket, when you measure it against childhood. Nothing can ever compare to that warm cocoon of security.

I guarantee you that I've launched a firestorm. Just wait for it. And that's inevitable, and indeed understandable. I've seemingly just called conservatives childish, and they will have a powerful kneejerk reaction to that.

There's nothing to be done about that, and this insight won't move conservatives to be any more cooperative with us. But maybe we can be a little more understanding toward conservatives, realize that they're afraid and hurting, and expressing it in our primate way, through anger and belligerance. In their attitude toward liberals, they're standing on the edge of the stream hooting and screaming (and flinging feces) trying desperately to drive off the threat on the opposite bank before it can get any closer.

We'll only find peace when we find a way to talk conservatives down from the ledge, and allow them to feel a bit more secure about their world and their future. They can't do it on their own; we need to work together.