It means the right to choose, equal opportunities for minorities, and caring for Gore' s adopted baby, the environment. Some Irish politicians share them. When the cookie crumbles, however, the agenda played out in Irish politics begins to resemble closely Republican beliefs. They oppose all rights to choose, minimise equal opportunities for minorities, and figure that if any American makes a few bucks out of chopping down forests, burning coal or sending poisonous emissions into the atmosphere, then no ornery conference in Kyoto has the right to stop them earning their living. Looking to relations with the wider world, Democrats say they believe their country's role is not only about economics, although it is largely predicated on economic interests.
Republicans claim to prefer to stay at home.
While faith-based attitudes play a background role, the Democrats are committed to a secular society that respects the rights of different faith communities. The Republicans are operating to the agenda of the fundamentalist Christian right, an ideology linked to the obsessiveness Arthur Miller dramatised in The Crucible, which drove prohibition and later the blacklisting shame of the 1950s. Bush, for example, is a family values man who never spells out exactly what that means. It doesn't mean Hispanic families, or African Americans, or any whites living on welfare. It means, or seems to, his family and the families of his sponsors and social class - the families able to pull strings to get their children into expensive schools and then into Ivy League colleges, even when, as Five Seven Live revealed about Bush's own academic career, their grades don't get them there.