Common Sense on the Left

I know that's difficult to believe, and I read with amazement this article in The Huffington Post: Why Limbaugh Is Right to Oppose Obama's Economic Policies, by Lee Stranahan. I'm not familiar with Mr. Stranahan, so it's possible he might be notable for regularly espousing reasonable left-wing political viewpoints. But at any rate, seeing this title in The Huffington Post was pretty startling to say the least. And it was even more surprising to find that it wasn't a satirical piece.

Stranahan makes an argument that I've made many times, that people on both left and right believe that their ideas are best for our country. And because they believe strongly in their side's ideas, they oppose the ideas of the other side and want them to fail. Now this might seem obvious to most rational people, but unfortunately it isn't to many partisans on each side, who automatically assign the worst possible motives to political opponents. Here's the key quote from the article:

I have no problem stating the simple truth -conservatives like Limbaugh love America just as much as liberals do. That's not the issue. The real problem gets lost in all the sound and fury - we just have different ideas of what America means.

I disagree with Stranahan on most issues, and I disagree with a number of his points of emphasis in this article. But overall I think he states something that's fundamentally correct, and is often lost on those who reflexively view their political opponents as evil.