This is in response to the Coburn editorial and Chris's statement that he can't understand where people like the conservatives in Oklahoma who vowed to 'vote righteously' are coming from. My very liberal friend (only a bit more liberal than myself) said yesterday that he thought the problem in this country was teevee. That people were so distracted by the circuses that they couldn't focus on what was going on in their country.  There's a thought that at some level, at some point, most of us have entertained.

Yet that's not so far from the conservative critique - we're a flaccid, self-indulgent nation of teevee-watching, boob-ogling, weak-willed and immoral slackers who have turned away from righteousness, misled by con artists into the ways of evil, yet we're so wealthy and powerful that we can ignore the consequences of our sins.  But someday, the chickens will come home to roost.

Apply that statement to Iraq and the Enron scandals, and it's the central part of the liberal critique of the President.  Apply it to the Hollywood culture of glorified sex, drugs and rock-n-roll and it's the central core of the conservative critique of 'liberal values'.  

And most of us share about 60% of the critique, whichever side we come down on.  What's so hard to understand?  We share much more than you think.