The first step in establishing dialogue between people of different political philosophies is to abandon the notion of "conservative" and "liberal." As soon as you label yourself, you start to see people who see things differently as "the other." You attribute beliefs to them that they may not hold, at least when their beliefs are held up to close questioning. When we try to talk to each other in a friendly and nonjudgmental manner about our differences, we are showing that we are not engaged in a contest of wills but seeking genuine understanding. If we manage to communicate our desire to work together toward common goals based on common values, we have the basis for healing the artificial left-right split. This is the Great Divide that keeps us fightingeach other instead of the common enemy: the economic elite who would have us become their slaves in a permanent fascist New World Order.
Thanks to a corporate media and the politicians whose interests it serves, the concepts of "conservative" and "liberal" have been turned on their heads. Traditionally, the intellectual defense of conservatism was the belief that radical change can lead to chaos and the loss of all the gains that have been made in creating governments more responsible to the needs of the people who form them. It is based in part on the idea that everyone is inherently corruptible, or at least those who seek the power to determine the destiny of nations and the world.
There is a logical basis for this fear, given lessons of history. However, thanks to the politics of division and corporate media and politicians that frame political debate to serve the interests of their wealthy patrons, most people who consider themselves conservatives today have supported the most radical turn away from representative democracy to date. Those most dissatisfied with the results not only blame "liberal" politicians and their supporters but fault the party most have supported for years because they do not think they favor change that is radical enough.
Modern liberalism has been as drastically perverted. With the Democratic Party moving ever closer to outright support of fascist policies in an attempt to appeal to what the corporate media defines as the political center, it is gradually moving that illusory center away from the ideal of representative democracy and toward an ever more powerful plutocracy. The effect is to have turned traditional liberalism into its antithesis. Instead of realizing that radical change has become imperative, they seen content with the incremental efforts of a corrupt party that claims to challenge the economic elite while voting to support it on nearly every issue where the corporate interest conflicts with that of We the People.
This can only end when partisan Democrats learn to question their deeply held belief that if and only if they can elect more Democrats can the country be saved from the depredations of a wealthy and powerful aristocracy that has in fact gained control over both parties. As with the Tea party movement, liberals most angry at the direction the country has taken have taken to actively opposing the Democratic Party. They blame the stubborn refusal of the rank and file to hold their leaders accountable for the miserable state of what passes for liberalism in America. In their ridicule of all Democrats, they fail to acknowledge the legitimacy of trying to work within the system for those who choose to do so. Instead, they are abandoning the political process altogether or forming an ever-expanding array of third parties that further divide their cause because they cannot seem to work together.
Fortunately, psychotherapy offers a way to resolve the conflicts between political reality and the way most people perceive it, whether they consider themselves liberal, conservative or neither. The trick to dealing with the patient who resists examining their own role in creating their problems is first establish rapport, then help them explore their beliefs. If those which are healthy and life-affirming can be shown to be incompatible with those more deeply held, one of the beliefs must change. If the person is capable of honest self-reflection, the healthy belief will be retained and beliefs based on cognitive distortions will be rejected. As a result, the belief system itself changes.
The alternative is to distort information that reveals the contradiction so that one can resist that change. Either way, being aware of two contradictory beliefs simultaneously creates a form of anxiety known as cognitive dissonance. It is the reason Albert Ellis' rational emotive therapy technique works. In RET, the therapist's job is to help the patients look at their lives objectively so that they may choose to change rather than resist it at a cost to not only their psychological integrity but their happiness. When the therapist succeeds at helping the patient see the connection between the simplistic beliefs that made the world make sense to the child and the problems they experience when they try to hold onto these beliefs as adults, it is possible to help them find more nuanced ways to view the world that are consistent with their core values.
I will not go into the basic differences in the modern conservative and modern liberal mind sets. I have little to add to George Lakoff's description of the one as favoring a stern, paternal view of government that encourages individuals to succeed on their own in a rigged system and the other as favoring a nurturing, cooperative society with a prominent role for government. I suggest that those interested in exploring these ideas read his excellent treatise Don't Think of an Elephant. What is more important is what he doesn't say, which is how to reconcile these different world views. That requires focusing not on the differences in the beliefs we are raised with, but the ideals we were all taught to regard as sacred. Among these are the principles of representative democracy and liberty and justice for all. While concepts of these ideals differ, there is nearly unanimous agreement that they are thwarted by a system that is deeply corrupted by special interests.
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