E'08: Surface or substance?

Great ideas wrestled and wrangled birthed this great nation.

In November, our nation decides its future's path. Many times in our history, the two pathways separated very little, appearing to disappear in the distance at the same point. The end desired by all parties was the same, the means to that end nuanced.

Not so today. From the point of separation the vector of the two parties, while not 180 degrees, are as divergent as I have ever known them to be.

Here's what troubles me. I hear very little about the ideas and their implementation from Progressive America. Even the national media speaks little about the substance of the Democratic Party. The things that I have read from the left trouble my soul.

"But you only stew in conservative writings," I hear you say. Only is a powerful word. My news intake comes from all over. My prominent five sites: CNN, Fox, Drudge, Pravda, and the Jerusalem Post. Others dipped into: NY Times "International" site, Al-Jazeera. I do delight in the clear, cogent, mostly reasoned writing found at National Review, the Weekly Standard, and Townhall.com. I have not found such well-reasoned sites on the left. It's time to go looking.

The most neutral site, though, simply because he links you to other news sources is Drudge. From his site, you can go to the right of anarchy or to the left of dictatorships.

In recent days, while scanning current events, the liberal end of the political spectrum reared itself in shocking ugliness. Consider:

• Michael Moore considered it an act of God, even thanking Him, that hurricane Gustav distracted America from the Republican National Convention. I used to think that MM was considered a cartoon by the left, not really a mouthpiece of that for which they stand, but I have never read nor heard anyone from that side distance themself from the filmmaker.
• If you merely think that Balaam's ride had again begun to speak, not so. the National Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Don Fowler, joked about the same thing to a friend on a plane.
• Note the thick insults toward Sarah Palin from a columnist who finds her selection as the VP candidate insulting (here).
• Extremes. Hyperbole is a wonderful and artful tool...when used like salt. Too much and the entree becomes inedible. This piece from the Philadelphia Daily News illustrates much of my concern about what's coming out of the left (here).
• If that weren't bad enough, Pravda's work is slanderous (here, there are two pages to the article). "Yeah, but that's the sworn enemy of the United States." I might agree with you if it didn't echo the standard commentary found on MSNBC. Notice the author. It's not a Russian. David R. Hoffman is an American, an attorney and a college professor.

Dictatorship. Unjust. Unjust invasion. Stole the election. Empire building. Rich getting richer. Stepping on the poor. Racist. Economic havoc and devastation. Environmental cataclysm. These are the deceitful and incendiary comments regularly leveled by liberals against the current administration or its ideals, unsubstantiated and disproven all.

In deepest sincerity, would someone point me to a site where liberal ideas are clearly articulated? If you know some sites, please include them under comments and leave yourself "anonymous." The stuff I've been reading makes me want to take a bath...and that from the pens of the left.

Can anyone explain why America ought dive headlong into a socialist way of life? We need to wrestle these ideas. Some of them have been in the dark too long and need to be exposed to the scrutiny of the light.

Perhaps such scrutiny will reveal an ideological monster, and after wrestling, we might once again find our paths drawing closer to a common end and the monster defeated. Perhaps.