"No Flags of Truce, No Cries of Pity"

"As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognized the walls that I once made,
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
of walking on the mines I'd laid..."

-- "Fortress Around Your Heart," by Sting & The Police

How many conservatives, I wonder, are really bigoted and hateful -- and how many have simply been demonized by their political rivals on the Left?

On the other hand, conservatives tend to do the same thing to liberals.

This mindless villification seems to stem from the all-out nuclear war now raging between Left and Right in American politics. At stake now is the almost total ability for the "victors" to tyrannize everyone else according to their own narrow ideology.

Were the powers of the State confined to what they should be -- performing the few tasks private citizens cannot do better -- there would be much more room for civility and understanding between those on the Left and those on the Right.

I know many good-hearted, decent and well-intentioned people on both sides. Far too few of them seem to recognize it in those on the other.

This war is tearing families, friendships, marriages and religious bodies apart. It is utter madness.

Bringing an end to politics that poison our souls by enabling the inner tyrant within each of us is the only way to stop the madness and restore us to peace.

I have come to believe, very literally, that a return to classical liberal, libertarian politics is the only way out of the hell to which we have damned ourselves.

We need to start seeing one another as people again, and recognizing our shared humanity, which is the only true source of our God-given rights and intrinsic value. Otherwise, the balkanization of our country -- which may have originated on the Left, but is now being perpetuated very nearly as much by the Right -- will surely destroy us. It will not end until we have destroyed each other.