The mainstream perception that conservatives are close-minded and dogmatic while liberals are open-minded and free-thinking has it almost exactly backward. Liberal dogma is settled: The government should do good, where it can, whenever it can. That is President Obama's idea of pragmatism and bipartisanship: He's open to all ideas, from either side of the aisle, about how best to expand government and get the state more involved in our lives.

But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.

There is no - let me repeat - no example in the last quarter-century of a large, complex economy that has been successful with high taxes.

We are a species that must try to impose and find systems - systems of thought, ways of organizing and categorizing reality.

I would also say Barack Obama has spent much, much, much, much more money than the Republicans.

Keep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government.

...associational ad hominem attacks remain the left's favorite rhetorical strategy for undermining opponents.