> Explosion of government spending and continuation of the nanny state is conservatism?
Anyone who knows my posts knows I agree with you about how far afield the Republican party has gone. But I think what the submitter is saying that when we do disagree about these things, we should leave the insults back in the playground.
My grandmother-- a true turn-of-the-century spitfire-- and I used to have knock-down drag out arguments over just about everything political under the sun. (This was during my brief-but-stupid obligatory teenage liberal period.) You can bet there was no name-calling or insults although it did get mighty passionate. Invariably during these sessions she'd stop, grab my hand, and say with shining eyes, "I **LOVE** a good argument!" Boy, do I miss her.
Argue with passion, but argue with respect. We're family.
I agree about the respect issue. It's easy to get so far into an argument that you forget the other person is a human being.