I hate socialism. I abhor the welfare state. Seriously, I think it will eventually be the death of this country. Even more than that I detest identity politics. So, because the modern Democratic Party is built on both, I'm not a happy camper there (despite my current registration), and I never will be.

Now, both parties contain lots of people who call other people names and launch character attacks against them. The difference between the two parties in this regard lies primarily in the respective targets of the name-calling, and the nature of the justifications invoked. Democrats (and I refer to activist Democrats here -- the type I cannot stand) generally believe it's fair game to attack those perceived to be powerful, white, male, heterosexual, and on the right -- especially on the "Christian right." Libertarians of the pro-war variety are subject to a particularly vicious form of attack, and and not just because their partial agreement with the "left" on "certain social issues" is seen as untidy, but because they see it as a very dangerous invitation to wholesale defection by "weaker" leftists. You know, feeble-minded bourgeois types who secretly think that if you have a right to do what you want with your own body, you might just have the right to defend it. Or (worse yet) that "human rights" might even include the right to own your own property without government interference. Or that when the country is attacked by free-floating, strike-and-run terrorist irregulars, it might be a good idea to figure out a way to engage them.

But this does not explain fully why disagreement on some issues is considered far more threatening to the left than disagreement on all issues, and why it is targeted with such particular wrath. (Even Andrew Sullivan remains loathed by many on the left, and his voting for Kerry was seen as some sort of trick.)

That this kind of "partial agreement heresy" is attacked so furiously is complicated to explain, but this vintage gem from James Wolcott is a great example:

....I'm getting awfully tired of the trope from certain bloggers that Hey, don't label me or him a conservative. Why, I'm for gay marriage and marched for civil rights once upon a time and favor a women's right to choose.

Well, goody goody goody for you. So what?

The fact is that by subscribing to Bush's War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq with every corpuscle of your tired body you've made common cause with Republican conservatives, neoconservatives, and Christian fundamentalists who are dedicated to destroying those parcels of liberalism on which you stake your tiny claims of pride. When you align yourself with the likes of Hugh Hewitt, author of that polemical gem of understatement If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It, or Michael Ledeen, you've allied yourselves to political gangsters dedicated to waging permanent war abroad and cultural war here. Do you really think that conservative supremacy in the executive, congressional, and judicial branches of government means that gay rights and abortion rights will somehow be spared? These people won't be happy until not only is gay marriage but gay adoption is outlawed as well; they're not out simply to restrict abortion but to restrict contraception of any kind. There is absolutely no excuse for certain bloggers to be upset or dismayed by Bush's recent statement about teaching Intelligent Design in schools--you bought the whole package when you chose him as your staunch leader in the war on terror, mocking liberals for being too wimpy for the task. Fine; but find me a high-ranking Democrat who would preside over an administration as anti-science as this one, a prospective Democratic president who would threaten to veto stem-cell legislation, having never vetoed anything else that crossed his desk.

Still, the hard core activists in both parties are very distrustful of partial dissenters, and I think that what makes this partial disagreement so dangerous (and so threatening to both right and left) is that it exposes the inconsistency of the way they have agreed to divvy up rights which ought to flow logically from the position that free men all share the same rights. It's as if some group of conspirators sat down and said, "OK, you take the right to be hedonistic and atheistic, and we'll take the right to be greedy have guns and worship God!" It has worked so well that people just assume this division of the rights of man is a natural part of politics -- as if freedom is not a concept but a political pie to be cut up and offered (or withheld) in selective slices. The reason so many people miss the inconsistency is that by nature they are joiners, and they join parties for the same reason they join most things: in order to feel comfortable. Let's face it, if you're a gay atheist, you'll find more gay atheists in the Democratic Party, and they'll tell you you're "welcome" there, but that the Republicans hate you. (Fortunately for them, it's easy to point to high-profile conservative attacks on "secularism" and the "homosexual agenda" as proof.) And if you're a gun-owning believer in God who thinks your money is yours, you'll likely find more people like that in the Republican Party, and they'll tell you you're not welcome in the Democratic Party. (Again, high-profile attacks on gun owners, the "greedy" and "the Christianists" are standard Democratic fare.)

Frankly, it bothers the hell out of me that so many conservatives think that having a First Amendment right to insult people and call them names and launch character attacks means these things are desirable, even good to do. There's even a meme going around that because opposition to evolution has been labeled "politically incorrect" that it must be cool. It's as if they're aping the left by mindlessly doing the opposite.

Take identity politics as another example. I have hated it for years as the antithesis of all logic and reason, as the worst sort or groupthink, as outright pandering to the mob, even. Yet identity politics has in recent years crept and grown, until at last it has insinuated its way quite deeply into that group of people who call themselves the "Republican base." If you doubt me, just take a look at this humorous post about Christian identity politics. Now, I have long complained about the similarities between gay activists and anti-gay activists. (From the pre-blogging infancy of this blog, in fact.) I once thought it was a very ironic comparison. But identity politics has now spread to the point where there are groups of people on both sides of the aisle who are paranoid to the point that they see disagreement as akin to discrimination.

To be fair, Republicans who adopt identity politics only apply it to groups they approve of, just as Democrats who would support gay identity support groups could never imagine gun owners identity support groups.

Where is the line to be drawn?

What is sometimes forgotten is that identity politics was -- and is -- born as a reaction against bigotry and personal attacks. (Or worse.) Entire nations have arisen this way. Arguments grounded in identity politics led to Kosovo (and much further back in the Balkans) and could be advanced to divide Kurdistan, Rwanda, Canada, and if the cancer grows, maybe even the United States itself. I like to think that identity politics is un-American. But here, it typically arises in reaction to simple bigotry. It's easy to say it "shouldn't" but that doesn't change the fact that it does. (I wish some of the people who condemn it would condemn it wherever it occurs...)

Conservatives often forget that the Klan and Jim Crow gave birth to black identity politics. That sodomy laws and anti-gay bigotry created the gay movement, that obsessive preoccupations and denunciations of "the homosexual agenda" fuels gay identity politics, and even causes well-meaning people to embrace it -- thus promoting the very "agenda" being denounced. And off course, leftist attacks on "Christianists" accomplish exactly the same thing.

It's easy to say I'm a libertarian, but even there I'm screwed, because I'm a war-supporting libertarian -- something said to be impossible.

So what do I do? I left the Republican Party to help counter the Limbaugh Democrats for Hillary. Did it leave me? I don't know, but I'll say this right now: if Hillary is able to turn this around and beat Obama, she can -- and will -- beat McCain. That's because if she wins, she'll be a battle-hardened winner from the right -- placing her in the very comfortable middle. (People forget that a major reason for the apparent incompetence of the Clinton campaign is that they're great at triangulating Republicans, but not an attractive young black man with a message of hope, but that's another issue.)

Anyway, I find it downright creepy that a sizeable chunk of the Republican party actually, seriously want their own party to lose -- presumably so they can take it over. To them, if I return to the Republican Party I'm a RINO, because I'll vote for McCain.

If they're the base, I'm glad I'm not.

I'm thinking maybe I should be a Democrat for McCain.

It's not perfect, but it might make it easier to live with my conscience.

I still hate the bases, though. Sometimes I think both parties need acid.

MORE: I realize that this post barely scratches the surface of some of the complexities involved. Added to the problems I discussed is the increasing inability to determine the meaning of liberal and conservative, even right and left. Even I call myself a "classical liberal," but that is said now to be conservative." Fascism can arguably be called left wing, and Communism has been described as "right wing" -- at least to people who claim "right wing" means "submission to perceived authorities." (Which means hopeless individualists like me cannot be on the right.) The problem there is that a lot of mindless followers on both sides submit to authorities.

Discussion is further complicated by post-modernist contentions like "words are not truth." (But what if lies become true with age?)

MORE: In a recent post about Barack Obama, Baldilocks looks at the inconsistent way some conservatives apply the concept of individual responsibility:

....neither I nor any other person/group has the right to offer another person/group any absolution for the sins of their fathers--if those sins exist--nor make anyone feel guilty about sins not their own.

Someone asked what my rant on principles was about; this was it. Some conservatives talk about individualism but when it comes time to apply the concept under adversity--under conditions where the concept of individualism isn't reciprocated--it's too damn hard. So when the Obamas and Wright and James Cone--who aren't even conservatives--espouse Black Liberation Theology; when the relatively few other black supremacists, narcissists and conspiracy theorists spout their hatred, such people automatically become the responsibility of 30 million other Americans who happen to be black also. Why? Nobody serious asks white people to repudiate the darlings at places like Stormfront and Loose Change nor should they. (It's as if some of you thought that white people had a lock on lunacy. On the contrary, Crazy and Evil are equal opportunity employers.)

Haven't conservatives been telling liberals to dispense with the Group Identity Politics, to embrace Individualism? Well, Conservatives, heal thyself!

And her earlier post on the Golden Rule is great too.