The extremists on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, are very frustrating to me. The political environment has gotten so polarized that the issues are not important anymore. It is entirely their side against my side. There is no more political discourse.

The conservatives entirely underestimate how much society has helped get them where they are. They think everything they have in their lives is 100% a result of their hard work. As a result they are usually against anything that doesn’t directly benefit them. They miss the intangibles in life. Having one less uneducated person in the world means there will be one more person to make a contribution to society, the economy, etc.

People on the far left seem to think the government has unlimited riches that are secretly stashed away and that there should be less income and wealth disparity. There needs to be incentive for risk takers and the people that go above and beyond, other wise our society will be stuck in mediocrity.

When I first became politically-aware, which was right around my last year in college, I was a proud Republican. I voted a straight Republican ticket. Looking back over the last 15 years however, the Republican Party has totally changed. The Democrat party now seems to be more similar to the 1989 Republican Party.

The Republicans now stand for big government rather than smaller government. The economy was the Republicans main focus back then. Now it seems to be short-term benefits to taxpayers at the long-term expense of the country's infrastructure and human capital.

The Republicans will say they are protecting the Constitution, and in the same breath announce an initiative that is blatantly unconstitutional. Then a year or two later, when the Supreme Court rules that said initiative is unconstitutional, scream that the country is being ruined by the courts. Flag burning is the best example of this. I despise flag burners. I love my country. But a law making flag burning illegal is so obviously unconstitutional I am always surprised when a senator tries again to get this ball rolling. If you think about it, if this law did pass, all of the bumpkins that wear black t-shirts with images of the American flag waving above their favorite Nascar driver would be violating the law.

I think the country is in big trouble if we don't get back to a more moderate political climate.