Manure eating conservatives

There’s a saying I’ve heard from Dennis Prager on talk radio: conservatives think liberals are wrong, but liberals think conservatives are evil. I’ve always found this to be a bit simplistic and exaggerated. Surely my Cambridge neighbors don’t think I’m evil because I disagree with them on the role of the government. But then I happened upon Mitchell E. Nelin’s letter in the Chronicle, who accuses conservatives of sympathizing with slavery, being ignorant, fearful of education and “thriving on a diet of manure.” Good grief, Mitchell, we’re not that bad. I don’t know a single conservative in Cambridge who approves of slavery, and I for one do not eat manure. Is this your idea of tolerance, dialogue and bipartisanship? Speaking of education, I seem to recall that both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were Republicans, and it was the southern Democrats—not Republicans—who voted en masse against the Civil Rights Act. Educate thyself.