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Every political party wants its followers to stick with them and not their opponents. So it’s natural that a party will seek to discredit a leader from its opposition. But today’s Republican Party went beyond the usual discrediting, and has sought to outright demonize Barack Obama.

Here’s my interpretation of why that is. It has three steps.

First, the Republican world constitutes a hierarchical society.  Read more... (780 words, 1 image, estimated 3:07 mins reading time)

This article appeared this past weekend in the Northern Virginia Daily and, in a shorter version, in Staunton’s Virginia News Leader.

What are we to believe about the size of government and the level of government spending?

Republicans say that the U.S. government has become way too big and that Americans are grossly overtaxed. Is that true?

In the United States, the rate of taxation is lower, and the size of government in relation to the size of the economy is smaller, than in just about every other nation like ours—rich, free, capitalistic, democratic societies.  Read more... (608 words, 1 image, estimated 2:26 mins reading time)

Here’s another of the foundation stones that will prove indispensable for building the “house” that that’s coming—the new integrative vision that I promised at the outset (in ”Swinging for the Fences: Please Join Me in this Bold New Effort”) — another of the major forces at work in human cultures: the transmission through the generations of the culture’s basic patterns.