Dan Agin: Republican Angst: The Darkness of the Illiberal

Published: August 27, 2007, 9:50 pm

Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, have a serious burden on their backs in the coming election -- the darkness of the illiberal. The Bushite handlers already recognized the burden in the election of 2000 when they tooted the slogan of "compassionate conservatism" to befuddle the American public. The tooting worked. Republicans do know how to toot. So what is an "illiberal"? The dictionary defines illiberal as the antithesis of liberal, and so it is. From the standpoint of biology and anthropology, human beings are omnivorous herd animals. Like their close relatives the chimpanzees and gorillas, they range in groups. But many animal species range in groups, so it's not a characteristic unique to the Great Apes or primates in general. In the language of biological evolution, we're apparently genetically programmed to prefer living in groups, thriving in groups, protecting each other in groups. Wolves do it, zebras do it, elephants do it, gorillas

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