There are a number of oddities when it comes to the current national debate about the direction the nation should take in the next several years. Some of these are related to such fundamentals that one is left to wonder if the differing sides live on the same planet.

Several weeks ago, a woman called a national talk show (conservative, of course) and asked something like this, "Why, when liberals call your show, do they always refer to us conservatives as 'you guys'?"

Good question.

Recently I wrote an article about liberals and conservatives getting an amicable divorce. One person suggested that I was guilty of sedition for suggesting such a thing. No one seemed to notice anything odd about that accusation.

Sedition is the act of generating insurrection against lawful authority.

Why was I guilty of sedition and the other writer was not? I simply suggested that liberals and conservatives split up our property and go our own ways.

The other writer assumed that her side was the "lawful authority."

Evidently, people who disagreed with this point of view were also "you guys," and outside the mainstream of acceptable thought.

When people start making assumptions that are never questioned, then we know that we are getting very close to their cultural roots.

Notice that the assumption of the writer is automatically taken by the left in almost all debate. Note as well that the media takes this stance so reflexively they don't even realize they are doing it. They bristle at the suggestion that the media is politically biased, and yet no press in the world seems more devoted, without threat of arrest, to maintaining one party and one political philosophy in power than does our own.

The political affiliation of criminals that happen to be politicians is mentioned only for one party. Criminals in the other party are treated like wayward family members who can be handled within the family without raising eyebrows from outsiders.

In other words, for those living in the left's cultural bubble, they are society. Everyone else is not part of legitimate society.

This fiction is necessary to maintain the moral superiority assumed by the left. For example, consider the case of government transfer payments. If the left is society and government is equal to society, then taking property from one person and giving it to another has a certain amount of moral justification. However, if the left is just another group and government is simply one of many arms of society, then taking property from one person to give it to another can legitimately be seen as a type of theft, and if it is done under threat of penalty, it is armed theft.

Yet, this assumption of majority status creates an interesting inversion of logic. In leftist mythology, the world is composed of three groups: victims, oppressors and saviors. Most people in the world are victims.

The smallest group is the saviors who protect the victims from the evil oppressors.

The saviors are a small group of very bright, highly moral individuals constantly on guard against the uneducated and greedy hordes that would devour the world without their constant vigil.

This is one of the reasons that left-leaning scientists gravitate toward global-warming theories, and professors can't resist political correctness. They must save the rest of us from the rest of us, as long as "us" is not them.

Which is it? Are they society, or the brave vanguard saving society from itself?

Since Jan. 27, national polls have shown that the Democratic Congress has an average unfavorable rating of 58 percent. According to a CBS poll, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has lower favorable ratings than Rush Limbaugh.

Obama managed to get slightly over half the votes running against an old man who no one liked, a candidate that even longtime Republicans like Colin Powell voted against.

So who is guilty of inciting insurrection ? and against whom?