I got into a testy exchange with an unhinged right-winger. I do think the Republicans are now like a crazed, irrational cult. It's a political organization that really functions more like a "bury their heads in the sand" religion. They cling to a world-view and disregard information that just doesn't fit their world-view. And if you bring up "facts" they will dismiss them as biased. In their world facts are pliable. So you get into this weird loop where you can't even get agreement on what exactly happened.
And it turns out that "reality has a clear liberal bias." For instance think evolution and climate change. These ideas are derived from the world as we find it. Not from minds of liberals... but if a liberal buys into it, it is suddenly discredited by the crazed right... and you can't argue with a true believer... it's kind of like putting a piano up your nose...
Update: I think a fundamental difference between liberals and the crazed right, liberals can be persuaded with facts. Liberals will alter their views of the world based on evidence. And a complicating factor: the scientific method shows us that what we "know" evolves based on discovery and accumulated data. The world became a very different place when we discovered bacteria, or we realized that the earth was not the center of the universe. Still the crazed right clings to a core worldview and they seem to take pride in clinging even in the face of evidence. That's a sign of their wing-nutti-ness.
Do I have a main/core liberal principle? Yes, I stole it from the Dali Lama - "Human beings first!" All else flows out from that principle. So no discrimination under the law. Black/white, straight/gay, poor/rich, franchised/disenfranchised, all are equal under the law... all beings treated with dignity and respect... we are human beings first... Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever... that's always secondary. The hard part: we even have to treat wing-nuts with respect. The hardest part of being a liberal is having to tolerate the intolerable, to tolerate the intolerant!