MarkD's above post is a Freedom Post.
The problem today is that we have ideologically-based parties held together in no small measure by identity politics. We've had identity politics in varying degrees throughout our history, but the ideologically-based political parties is, honestly, a relatively new feature. These conditions tend to cause people to be certain in their judgment and less open to the idea that they may be wrong on an issue.
Everyone is clamoring to denounce identity politics like it's some new phenomenon that just recently appeared out of nowhere. It's always been there and always will be. The idea that you can have politics without identity is just another one of these lofty intellectual ideals, like bipartisanship or civility, cooked up by beltway journo's that simply dont exist in the real world.
