Ed,

Couldn't agree more!

Too many in the GOP take the position that the social conservatives are not going to really hurt things because their candidate won't get elected, and in the meantime they are hard campaign workers and big contributors so they want to keep them around.

Most of the GOP get embarrassed by the extreme idiocy of some of the religious right, but won't attack them for fear they will look like they are attacking Mom and apple pie. The only real hope is that the libertarian and libertarian-conservatives who are in office or running for office will make the attacks and set an example, but they are a minority and desperately want the support of religious folk.

But if the religious right isn't seriously marginalized in some fashion, they will be the gift that keeps on giving to the progressives. The progressives are only able to win, even in today's liberal world, as long as they can keep painting the GOP as the party of religious nutcakes, racists, supporters of the rich, and war-mongers. There are great arguments for all of those... except for the religious nutcakes.

I sense that the country might be ripe for a swing in the direction of libertarian thought - especially since Obama and the progressives have badly overreached and appear to be leaving the Overton Window to the left. But then, I might just be doing what Charlie Brown did when he'd hold the football for Lucy.

What could make the progressive totally unappealing would be to reveal the general nature of their dishonest approach to politics. They don't have that many tricks, just lots of imaginative applications. They keep using the race card. They use identity politics. They use trojan horse legislation (like ObamaCare - you have to bring that horse inside the gates to find out what's inside it). They always dress up their drives for control as something good for children, or the poor, or the working man, or sick, or the planet - but they are really just further moves to have an elite in Washington control all things. Their use of environmentalism as a ploy for statism.

If their tricks could be broadly exposed to the point that in a debate when the good guy said, "There you go again," everyone would laugh because they'd see that the progressive was just trotting out another already exposed dishonest trick.

I really believe that the core dishonesty of all progressive politics is the edge letting them get away with as much as they have, but in the long run is their greatest weakness.

Just like it is the core dishonesty of the religious right that lets them get away with what they do.  The dishonesty of calling forbidding two people the same rights as others because they are gay just a matter of the definition of marriage.  This is NOT about dictionary usage, it is about laws like the Jim Crow laws that prohibited interracial marriages.  And family values is just code for getting government to pass laws based upon biblical interpretations - just as biblical interpretations is the only reason for their drive to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her body (Taliban-lite).  

Vera,

I think you've taken the "sheeple" concept to far.  When I travel about the United States I meet a large variety of people. Some are dedicated sheeple - even militant about it.  But they are a fairly small minority.  Most people are reasonably ethical and work for a living and their worst political flaw is that they are low information voters who have believed a lot of the lies they have been told.

They have been told by all the different entertainment outlets - TV, movies, and print, nearly all the news sources, by most of the intellectuals, and nearly every university that progressivism is the new and correct approach to all things political.

When they start to hear the truth many of them will come around. Most of the people don't believe what politicians say, and they know they are being lied to from that sosurce, but they aren't following the political scene as closely as we do and they aren't students of the principles involved.  And right now they aren't being offered good political choices. Hey, they have a life and that is where they are focused.

People are voting in one direction or the other, and they are chosing between what is offered. The only voting that matters, as we know, are those votes that move us towards progressivism or towards libertarianism. Because those are the two opposing forces battling for and against liberty today.

The real dividing line is between those who would knowingly vote for a severe decrease in personal liberty for everyone as long as they get what they personally want (entitlements, union-based sinceture, etc.) and those who when they do see that something would harm the country economically and reduce our liberty will vote against it even if it decreases funding to some things they believe ought to funded. That is the vote we need and I think that the good guys would still win. But it will take more education for the good guys to see what is really happening. Lies are working, but only so long as they aren't being exposed.

Dishonesty has several components. One is personal to the individual and the loss of self-esteem when it is practiced. Another is to the society that is harmed to the degree that dishonesty has to countered or endured. There is a short-term gain for someone who lies to get their way, but only if you don't add the loss of self-esteem into the equation. Long term there is a great loss because it is a quicksand like foundation to construct anything on. A person ends up being held hostage by their past lies. And to shatter then it is only necessary to make their lies stand out boldy. It destroys their credibility at the same time it destroys their arguments.

When you take the "sheeple" concept to the place that it becomes synonymous with human nature you get into trouble because that is everyone - you and I included - and we both reject that. So, sheepleness is a learned, adopted approach and not hard wired. I maintain that only a tiny portion of the population are dedicated and unchangable in their sheepleness. The rest are potentially good people who only need a fair shake from the educational, entertainment, and news medias to be able and willing to vote the right way.

Addendum for the last question:

'I love my mother, I love my wife, I love my daughter - they individually bring value to my individual life' >> individual value of family

'I have no clue how a woman can love a woman, or how you can love more than one person, or hand over your daughters to someone else to raise, but with the right education, societal acceptance and political validation of such a relationship I could understand and accept it' >> societal value of a family