The Real Rift
The real rift between the left and the right is rooted in basic psychology. I spoke briefly about the pack mentality of city dwellers vs the individialism of the rest of the country, but now I'd like to speak of another difference: the lack of self respect the left wing exhibits vs. the right.
Left wingers modify reality; they live their lives by the perceptions and beliefs of others, not what really is. That's why they support a lot of social programs that rip money away from those who earned it and give it to those who didn't. They say that because those who didn't earn it
deserve it, they must have it. Guess what? You don't deserve a damn thing more than you earned. Another example is cheating in polls; they get gratification from the fact that people
believe they won, not that they did so in truth.
Liberals disregard the truth and focus only on the end result; as long as they have their power, they don't care how they got it. As long as their constituents vote for them, they don't care if it's because they bribed them by stealing from the rich and lied their asses off. As long as people believe they're war heroes, it doesn't matter that it's totally false and they wounded themselves outside a combat zone or fled like cowards before lying on after action writeups. Liberals have no self respect; they have to get all their respect, earned or not, from others.
Don't take this as a blanket statement, but more a general classification. There are exceptions, of course; Max Cleland didn't start lying about his wounds until a few years ago, and before that I could have respected him. Kerry I will never respect.
A lot of people might say the exact same thing about the right wing, except that it's not true. The right does have moral values, and I've never known a conservative who lied about his own worth for the respect of others. Conservatives believe that you deserve what you earn; you reap what you sow, so to speak. The conservatives I know respect themselves, and they don't need others to heap praise on them to feel good about themselves. Did Bush make indignant statements about his 'patriotism' every time some left wing nutjob called him a pussy for joining the TANG? No, because he knew it wasn't true--flying Delta Daggers is not a job for the faint of heart, or the stupid. Kerry's insecurity showed through when he had to respond to every allegation--some true, some false--about his service.
Okay, that was barely coherent, but I'm tired. If I feel like cleaning it up later I will.
Update: Oh, I thought of another example of the left wing lunacy: Celebrities. On the whole, the left wing celebrities believe in their own great intelligence, phenomenal insight, and earth shaking influence on society. Right wing celebrities often have a much clearer view on their true place in society, as entertainers.
Update 2: Just for the record, I'm suggesting that some basic psychological characteristics of an individual have a great impact on his political alignment, not that his political alignment affects his psychology. Maybe that's obvious but I felt I needed to clarify.
