CULTURE WAR!   Americans love to disagree.  We gleefully stoke the fires of controversy over a wide slate of defining issues.  These include evolution, abortion, racism, terrorism, economic policy, gun control, gay rights and political correctness.  And Christmas. We polarize the polemics and dictate the dichotomy.  We spin and smear, muckrake and mudsling.   We talk past each other.  We apply labels and attack the labels.  The bad guys are liberals or conservatives, leftists or rightists, fascists or communists, secular humanists or religious fundamentalists, tree huggers, bible thumpers or gun grabbers, gun nuts, wingnuts or moonbats.   Oh, and moderates and centrists.  Poor pragmatists.  No one waves a flag for pragmatism. Are you the kind of person who asks people what they think, or do you tell them what they think?   Here’s a place where you can find out what someone thinks about, well, about a lot of stuff.  And then you can say what you think about what they think.  If you can change your mind, then so can we, and the result will be a better understanding.  Of the truth. THE ESSAYS: 1. Creation  2. Instinct  3. Race  4. Culture  5. Poverty  6. Health Care   7. Family Planning  8. Ideology  9. Symbols  10. Guns  11. Gays 12. The Middle East  13. The New World Order  14. The End? Additional essays are linked to in the blogroll of previous ones. host@squeakywheelsblog.com