Merle Borg: National IQ test

"All groups have their extremists. They are responsible for much of the humor and tragedy of life. Vegetarians have their vegans. Believers have their martyrs. On our political scene, democrats have their "anti-business" environmentalists and their "share the riches" reformers, liberal egg-heads who see corporate America and all disparity in wealth as evil. Republicans have their flag waving, gun worshipping, bible thumping extremists, suspicious red-necked fundamentalists who cannot exist without an enemy. Political extremists are intolerant and are able to simplify complex issues and arouse base or lofty passions. Though their numbers are small, they are extremely dangerous as current events in America will sadly verify.
Mainstream democrats comprise the conscience of America. Unhampered by fundamentalist doctrine, they are responsible for notable advances in civil and women's rights, environmental protection, and fairness in labor and housing. Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" flirted frighteningly close to the left, however. It set up "project" housing and "permanent" welfare entitlements, costly failures that will take generations to dismantle. The excesses have been recognized and limits on welfare, free trade agreements, and balanced budgets are the result of more recent democratic administrations. This moderate thinking holds throughout much of the industrial world where various forms of free enterprise are eagerly competing with each other. The myth of a powerful liberal left exists primarily on talk radio as a bogey man in the minds of the extreme right.
Mainstream republicans have historically kept America's industrial engine humming. Fierce defenders of unfettered trade and practical hard-headed enterprise, they revel in freedom and individualism and jealously guard the other half of our greatness. Recently, however, their paranoid fringe has been resurrected. The last major outburst reached its peak fifty years ago when Joseph McCarthy led our nation in a fervent hunt for "godless communists." When communism was quietly discarded in Russia and China, the "right" lost its arch opponent and its reason for being. Paranoia, however, finds an enemy and it fastened on some vague internal threat. A small but grisly American episode culminated in the fiery and self-fulfilling "Waco" disaster, followed by the even more tragic Oklahoma City bombing. America's current paranoia unfortunately is larger and more sinister in scope."