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. Ten years later, after the union had been broken and a trickle of unemployed controllers came hat in hand to apply for jobs, President George Bush refused to hire them. In the 1960s, Morton Halperin served in both the Johnson and Nixon administrations. In 1970 he resigned in protest over Nixon's illegal invasion of Cambodia.