The unbridgeable divide

René Magritte's classic

Liberal / progressive vs conservative.   I’ve usually attributed the unbridgeable divide to critical thinking vs emotions.  Dennis Prager expands on the reasons for the divide:

The Left-Right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable. There are three reasons.

First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be. The Right believes the Founders’ vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The Left (not liberals) shares none of those values.

Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide. Left and Right have different perceptions of reality.

. . .

The Left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. This is, therefore, not an opinion divide—”You prefer capitalism. I prefer socialism”—but a reality divide.

The reason this is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation’s future. 

. . .

The full article is here. 

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