Moderation is Not an Option

One of the reasons I wanted Kerry to win was that I wanted to see the Republicans howl. That would have been fun. Seeing the persistent whine from Democrats is less than demoralizing. Among the things they hate Bush for is some of the only remotely decent things that either party stands for, like federalism, gun rights, and lower taxes. Even worse, not only is Bush not serious about these issues, he's not even serious about abortion or gay marriage. Everything he says or does is a political calculation to win votes, not to implement policy. Why can't liberals spot insincerity when they see it?

Bush doesn't care about anything but beating Ann Richards for the "silver spoon in his mouth" insult of his Daddy, beating Saddam for standing up to his Daddy, beating Clinton for defeating his Daddy, and finally, proving that he is better than his Daddy.

That said, much of what I'm getting in the media still revolves around "values" questions. Bush won because of Christian fundamentalists, not because most Americans think Bush is courageously battling Islamic fundamentalism.

It is easier for people to think this way. It's easier for the media to think this way. It will always appear this way; America is the struggle between:

-the compassionate vs. the capitalist;
-the liberal vs. the intolerant;
-social justice vs. profiteering;
-liberty vs. bigotry;
-multilateralism vs. unilateralism (whatever happened to isolationism?);
-free speech vs. censorship;
-tolerance vs. fundamentalism;
-choice vs. subjection.
-etc. vs. etc.

It's a silly game with no moderation at all. There's no place for a person to say "tolerate abortion, but no public funding" or "I personally think abortion should be legal, but Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and the issue should be decided by the states."

Now that's moderation. Common sense has been relegated to libertarian fever swamps.

This is a sick world. The choice is to either prohibit stem-cell research, or force taxpayers with ethical objections to stem-cell research to pay for it. No compromise, such as keeping it legal, but preventing taxpayer funding for it, is permissible in our values wars.

In this contest, the Liberal Fundamentalists are just as bad as the religious fundamentalists.