Aquinas: 'Sin Is Always Accompanied By Loss Of Proportion/Perspective'

Alan: American conservatives construct their ideologies with deliberate disregard - even disdain - for proportion and perspective.

They are extremist ideologues who casually deny the polarities built into existence.

 Taxes must always go down.

Violence -- in defense of "The Good" -- must be relentless.

Compromise is intrinsically evil.

God is always on their side.

Aggressive commitment to partisan principle is the only good.

America is exceptionally good and the rest of the world exceptionally bad.

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” 
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander” by Thomas Merton  
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html