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Originally Posted by Griff
I think hard left and hard right pretend to respect the individual but when the rubber meets the road neither trusts their fellow citizens to make the most appropriate choices for themselves. More and more we insert law as the lubrication between people where community might suffice. This tendency moderates as you move toward the center where Americans share more values, but it never goes away (ignoring Badnariks <1%). It will be interesting to see how both parties market their positions, from here on out. Bush is in a bad spot with the fiscally responsible and Kerry is only "not Bush" to the anti-war crowd. To some extent they both have problems with their natural base which will lead to tension when they go for the center.
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I think you are correct in your perception that the extremes on either end have little faith in their fellow citizens. I don't consider myself an extremist (I may be a liberal, but I don't believe in socialism, for example). However, I'm afraid I don't have much confidence in the American voter either. The percentage of those who vote continues to drop, and those who do vote seem to be remarkably ill-informed. To quote Yeats' famous lines:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
This seems to me even more appropriate now then at the time when Yeats first penned those words.