“By contrast, most non-Jewish political conservatives either 1) live in rural or Southern areas where local Democrats are right-wing radicals compared to the dominant national Democratic Party leadership,”
Umm . . . no.
“or 2) have socially isolated themselves from their community’s liberal influences via Christian schools, the homeschooling movement, church groups, and/or close-knit family ties. The result is many of us truly don’t realize how bad the liberals are because we don’t deal with them very often on a personal level.”
Umm . . . no. Sorry. “Non-Jewish political conservatives” are not all just the religious-right homeschoolers of the world. We see liberals up close and personal every single day. There are plenty of liberals in rural settings.
Now you are showing your own isolation from most Conservatives in this country by your own narrow concept of Republicanism and Conservatism.
Sorry, but no.
My main point was that conservatives and liberals typically live in worlds which are so different from each other, either due to geography or self-selection of friends and social groups, that typical conservatives often have very little personal contact with extreme far-left liberalism unless they deliberately choose to become politically active and inform themselves about how bad the nut-case nonsense has become. Those of us on Free Republic are likely to know much more about liberalism than our friends who agree with us, but that's because we've deliberately chosen to inform ourselves.
From your screen name, assuming you live in New York City (BTW, my church membership was once in Neighborhood Church of Greenwich Village, which for a long time was the only evangelical church in that ultra-liberal area) I certainly grant that you are one of the conservative Republicans who deal with far-left liberals regularly. You can't live in NYC without doing that.
You probably know the statistics better than I do, but aren't something like 85 percent of New Yorkers Democrats? Is it not true that there aren't many Republicans there, and those who are Republicans generally are either the Giuliani type of “RINOs,” and more strictly conservative people generally keep their political views mostly to themselves? RLMorel’s story about the left-wing Massachusetts woman who was shocked to find out she was working next to a Sarah Palin supporter resonates with me. I've never tried to hide my political views, but I've usually been the token conservative at most places where I've worked and the usual attitude has been surprise that a Republican like me isn't a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal and that it's actually possible to make it through college without becoming at least moderately liberal.
If someone is going to live in New York City as a conservative Christian, there's a pretty good chance they're not going to want to have their kids in the public schools for both moral and academic reasons. While I have no problem with Christian schools or homeschooling (I attended public schools, our niece who lives with us goes to a Christian school, and I know many homeschoolers) it does tend to cut young families off from their community except in the workplace. In addition, if the wife is a full-time stay-at-home mother, that means only the father is going to have extensive contact with the “outside world” of secular liberals through work. Even if that family sends their kids to Stuyvesant High School or one of the other academically elite public high schools in the city, they're going to be in contact mostly with a subset of New Yorkers that is not representative of the city at large. Most Christian families who take their faith seriously are rather careful to protect their children from problematic influences if they go to public schools, and even in that environment, friendships are going to be determined largely by shared values.
Of course, if we're talking about secular conservatives, that last paragraph doesn't apply as much. I know lots of secular conservatives who are very unhappy with the liberalism of their communities, but a decision not to send one’s children to public schools is a decision to isolate oneself from a lot of things in the local community in ways that don't happen as much if the children go to public schools.
Now change that scenario to a conservative Republican in rural America or much of the South.
In that context, while far-left liberals do exist, they're almost as rare as right-wing Republicans in our major liberal cities. The typical Democrat is likely to be moderate or even (especially with the older ones) somewhat conservative, and the definition of “liberal” is far more conservative than the standard definition in someplace like New York City or Los Angeles.
In that environment, conservative Republicans are isolated from liberals not because they've chosen to protect their families, but because there aren't many true liberals around. I now live in the South outside a large Army installation, and the definition of “liberal” around here would be most people's idea of a conservative Republican when I lived in New York City. I could name a few true left-wing nuts around here, but they have virtually no influence and the Democrats try to shut them up, knowing that when they open their mouths they embarrass their fellow Democrats and lose votes.
The end result is many left-wing liberals and many right-wing conservatives simply don't have a lot of social contact with each other. There are obviously exceptions, but I think in general most conservatives who don't pay close attention to politics don't realize how bad liberalism has become, and articles like this shown to us by the original poster indicate that most liberals don't have much contact with conservatives, either. Even in this article, the Republican man is a Romney supporter who got talked into thinking Sen. John Kerry is a war hero, which means he can't be that conservative.