——Leftists really are more “intellectual” than those on the right, in the sense that when ideas clash with reality, leftists cling to their theories, and try to force the world to conform to them.——
Thus the phrase “communism has never worked because it has never been applied completely”
If you want a nice take on the roots of the current ideological struggle read Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions.” It boils down to a question about the perfectability of man. Liberals see man as perfectable if everybody was just more enlightened. Conservatives see man as inherently imperfect and selfish (think orginal sin) and accept that moral compromises must be made (some people will alway be poor, etc.) I explained it to a friend this way: Were you sadder when 100,000 people died in a flood in India, or when your dog got a cactus thorn in it’s paw? The reason liberals are constantly disappointed is that few things are a safer bet than human frailty. They see conservatives’ refusal to accept their grand vision as a character flaw when it is ultimately a more realistic way of understanding human nature. That’s the main reason the liberalism is in many ways a noble fool’s errand.