The Bluffs Notes Version
Here you will find a brief synopsis of pretty much everything to be found at the Radical Bleeding Heart (except for the Madman—he is on his own).
What Divides Progressives and Conservatives?
This is not a simple question. One might imagine that we simply have different values. Conservatives like things the way they are, for instance, while progressives don't and want them changed. Would it were so simple. Yes, there is truth to that view, but it is only part of the truth, and not the part that makes things so difficult.
The More Important It Is, The Less Rational We Are. The basic problem is that we are not really rational. Or rather, we are part rational and part irrational and cannot always tell the difference. We are story-telling creatures. We tell stories about the world in which we live. Were we rational, the stories would be based on logic and fact. But we believe rather what we want to believe, not what the evidence and reason would dictate. All of us, liberals and conservatives. Liberals and conservatives both believe that the others are deluded and incapable of seeing the truth. Both are right, of course. We live in different worlds, worlds of our own imagining, and we both can see the folly of the other guy's fantasies, but not our own. [THERE IS MORE HERE.]
That still does not account for the great gulf that separates us. To understand that we must look at follies that are a conservative specialty. Not a monopoly, you understand — progressives share them to a degree — just a specialty.