Think Lani Guinier. Conservatives and liberals take a fundamentally different approach to politics. Liberals inhabit a world painted a thousand shades of gray. Conservatives live in a black and white world.
Conservatives believe they are battling evil.
Liberals believe they are struggling to overcome human frailties. We have seen the enemy, the liberal president advised in that speech, and he is us. Tolerance is the watchword for liberals. Punishment is the watchword for conservatives. In 1980, when the nation's overworked air traffic controllers went on strike, President Ronald Reagan fired every last one.