Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -- Philip K. Dick

So what I'm saying is that the divide is between people who are essentially rational and those that are irrational, communities that are faith-based and those that are reality-based, outlooks that are ideologically dogmatic and those based on some version of the scientific method -- in other words, between believers and skeptics, zealots and realists.

Unfortunately, as much as those of us on the left side of center enjoyed dancing with pleasure when Ron Suskind's article in the New York Times Magazine pegged Bush as a disdainer of reality-based thinking, the terrible truth is that there are just as many true believers on the left as there are on the right, and they're just as apt to believe what they want to believe, because they just know it's right, regardless of whether there's any real evidence to support their contentions. First, they choose what they want to be true, then they go out looking for evidence to support it, and, just like Bush's people cherry-picking data to back-up their all-too-obvious desire to invade Iraq, they eventually find something that seems to back them up.

Distilled to its essence, liberalism is the scientific method turned to the social and political realm. We do not have dogmas to guide us, we have REASON, and that is our greatest strength. -- Roger Keeling

What these folks almost never do is to first examine the available evidence, and then draw a conclusion based on it, and when more and better evidence becomes available, change their stance to bring it into line with the newer and better understanding of reality. That's a model of rational, realistic, skeptical thinking that ideologues (of all stripes, left and right) are patently uncomfortable with, and the preference is, I think, so basic that it may well be impossible for an adult to change their way of dealing with the world.

What this suggests is that if we're really interested in getting rid of the faith-based ideologues who now rule us, we had best make common cause with the realists across the aisle, our mirror-images, because, regardless of the differences in our interpretations of reality, there is still the possibility of broad agreement in principle about what reality is, a possibility which just doesn't exist when dealing with dogmatists of either side.

We'd be better off, I'm beginning to think, reshaping the Democratic party not as a centrist one (which has been the basic urge of the DLC and their allies), nor as a more forcefully liberal party (which is what most of my friends want), but instead to remake it as the party of realism, able to cogently evaluate problems, shape viable solutions for them, and forcefully implement those solutions, then assess the efficacy of the solutions and adjust them accordingly. As long as these activities are all underpinned by humanistic values, the net result is bound to be broadly liberal and basically progressive, which really should be enough to fulfill the party's status as the country's center/left option.

Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right / Here I am / Stuck in the middle with you. -- Joe Egan & Gerry Rafferty ("Stealer's Wheel")

The alternative, I fear, is to continue to suffer under the thumb of our faith-based oppressors. Yes, it's certainly true that we came this close to getting rid of a sitting President in wartime, but four more years of their having total control over all branches of the Federal government is certainly going to make it that much harder to get even that close next time around, unless we drastically change something. I'm not willling to jettison basic liberal principles, but I am willing to see them modified in ways that make them more palatable to more people, as long as they retain their essence.

Rationalists of the world unite, together we can rein in the ideologues! (Or something like that.)