I swear I discovered that one of the secrets to happiness in my life is trying to understand how the other guy (Republicans are the "other guy" in my case) came to the conclusions he did. It took me years and years to finally figure it out, unfortunately, but by and large I found that Republicans simply review the facts, analyze them against certain values, and come up with different conclusions than I did. They're not bad guys. They kind of look like me, too. I understand they have families and kids, too, sometimes.

When I started shutting out the partisan hack horse's ass who kept yelling my opponent is evil and stupid, and just realized my opponents were rating the world with different values, then I relaxed. I'm saying that, yes, I will argue and discuss which values are more important or which are more correct in the particular circumstance, but that I won't so quickly insist (in my head or out loud) that my opponent has evil, Dark Force motives.

(Sorry, Tim, for the philosophical, self-serving, self-congratulatory rant. My Prozac is industrial-strength today.)

Rock on, Tom

Tom - Same goes for Right->Left. One thing that lowered my BP was the realization that a lot of the active people on the left are well-meaning. The onslaught of antisocial behavior has letely been one of my favorite topics:

About that time I took a trip to Toronto, which is one of the most civilized, and liberal places I'd ever been. San Diego is the converse. I realized then that there is little connection between antisocial behavior and political views.

The problem then becomes the following:

1) Which political party permits/appeases antisocial behavior?
2) Which political party benefits from antisocial behavior?
3) Which political party do antisocial people support?

Now you can basically replace "antisocial behavior" with any other negative topic to help build clarity. Try "illegal immigration" for example (the anwer to all 3 is "Both" in that case).