Part of the cause of the breakdown of political dialogue is saying ‘Just shut up’.

Shout-downs only inflame the issue further.

I agree that news needs to be unbiased, but as you will find, choosing which articles are headlines and which are not is also a form of passive bias. For example, Foleygate made BIG headlines. Yet, when dictator Kim Jung Il set off his Nuclear Bomb, that receive tertiary coverage (compared to Foley).

You seem unhappy with ‘Liberals and Conservatives’. Over time, I think, you will find you will be liberal about some things and conservative (small caps intended) about others – if you are like most people. Once that happens, you will (surprise!) figure out which political party you are most comfortable with. Of course that can change, as it did for me.

It would be interesting to see where you stand about bias and politics 10 years from now.

There was a time when the Democrats were the cutting edge of liberal – at least when it came to the flowering of Socialism and social programs (lets not talk about Civil Rights as both parties would argue that they were the ones who spearheaded that).

The writings of Adalai Stevenson were inspiring and full of vision (very unlike Democrats of today).

But that was 50 years ago.

OTOH, 140 years ago, the Republicans with their anti-slavery platform were the liberals.

But we all know times change and when a movement is fulfilled/transformed/lost, the group that is custodian to this movement either finds something new to be liberal about or they calcify and it becomes the diglossic form called Liberal (capitalization intended).

Just as the Democrats have become.

I was a Democrat, yet I still am a democrat. I had wished to vote for McGovern and Carter, just as I voted for Mondale … and George Bush.

Times change. The term liberal is an internal thing and has no affiliation to any party.

These days, I am a Conservative (Capitalization intended) which is the new liberal.

Or should I say ‘neo liberal’?