An important excerpt from yesterday’s NYT op-ed by Ross Douthat:
This role reversal is a case study in the awesome power of the partisan mindset. Up to a point, American politics reflects abiding philosophical divisions. But people who follow politics closely — whether voters, activists or pundits — are often partisans first and ideologues second. Instead of assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be doing. Our ideological convictions may be real enough, but our deepest conviction is often that the other guys can’t be trusted.
The whole thing is worth reading, as he also discusses the good thing about partisanship in our form of democracy.
(On the TSA—the example Douthat is using—readers might also be interested in this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.)