Actually, TB, I don't really disagree with anything you just said. I just don't necessarily accept your conclusions, how the situation came to be, or your specific proposals for solving these problems. And I certainly reject who you believe is to blame for them and their motives.

What I do believe is that you, and the Right in general, although having identified a real problem, and perhaps even having a few genuine solutions, wish to implement policies and a philosophy that I find not only counter- productive, but overly-simplistic and even incompatible with my belief in how government should run and what it should do. And I further believe you wish to institute these policies primarily for reasons of naked self-interest, not the interest of the nation as a whole.

I certainly do not accuse all the Right of blatant and mercenary self-interest (although neither do I deny some certainly exists), but that people, even the most honest among us, generally tend to favor policies which favor them (you're not going to see me attacking Social Security and VA appropriations any time soon, or cutting government funding to scientific research). Neither do I claim the Left to be free of such natural biases either.

However, I do find that my opponents on the Right do not extend to me that same benefit of a doubt I used to be willing to extend to them. I perceive that one of their favorite tactics is the discrediting of those who oppose them using emotional arguments based on push-button issues. I do not like the groups they have chosen to ally themselves with, and I feel they adopt an attitude of self-righteousness and moral and intellectual superiority I find publicly opportunistic and personally offensive.

I am much more politically aware and concerned, and certainly much more partisan than when I first started posting here a few years ago. I don't doubt the others have noticed it, although I'd be willing to wager you probably think I am the same now as I was then. I'm convinced you subconsciously lump all your critics into a featureless and indistinguishable mass. I further regret to say this change in my attitude is largely due to my contact with you on this board.
It is sad, because I believe we could have learned much from one another.

Faced with the pugnacious and aggressive, and frankly, ruthless, attitude of the New Right, and saddened by how I have seen it spread into the political debate in this country, on both sides now, paralyzing and dividing it, I have been forced to make a choice, a binary decision, as to what I believe is best for my country. I have chosen to lean Left.