liberal, conservative - bah, humbug

For decades, politicians and other rabble-rousers in Florida have played the "pin the tail on the donkey" game. If I can make more liberal "tails" stick to my opponent's donkey, and keep a conservative "tail" attached to mine, I win. That's because too many people have a simple-minded view of life. If a person or an idea is a liberal, that's bad, but if the person or idea is conservative, that's good (or vice versa). Once the tail attaches to the donkey there is no longer a need to expend mental energy trying to analyze or understand either the person or the idea no matter how complex the subject might be. For some odd reason, most of the people who fall into this trap call themselves conservatives.

I'm happy to report that a long-time journalist for the St. Pete Times, who has spent a career following state government in Tallahassee, has written a nice piece exploding this nonsense. I'll let it speak for itself. Read it here: http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/24/Columns/New_crises_facing_us_.shtml