Its hard to be a prophet in one’s own hometown.

One thing we’ve learned here at TRS is the difficulty one experiences in preaching the need for change in one’s own political campsite. How hard must it be for a liberal to deviate from the party line? After all, orthodoxy of thought, even at the cost of factual reality, is the most significant and necessary tenant of modern Western liberalism.

Camille Paglia, rightly considered to be among the most leftie of American lefties, wrote these words today:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Paglia’s article is well worth the read. As a liberal, who has attended those liberal cocktail parties where people snicker at jokes about the President’s intelligence, or lack thereof, notwithstanding W’s substantially higher IQ than either Al Gore, Jr. or John F. Kerry, or his higher test scores, or better grades at as goat equivalent or better Ivy League schools, who would know better than Camille how belief as replaced reason for Western liberals?

Paglia’s September 10 column will surely pare her tony party list but she’s done the country a service. The country will never diminish its partisan polarization until liberals concede the conservative’s right to exist.