Where you stand on the political spectrum seems to have taken on added importance as America advances into the Age of Obama. Many think conservative and liberal politics to be a continuum, and we describe someone as being "right" or "far right" as compared to "left" or "far left," even though the term is never used by the American media.

But are these differences really just a matter of degree? If this were true, then a leftist would be just another conservative at a different point on the spectrum.

I have come to believe that these differences are more central and involve a number of unstated differences that would be more accurately described as cultural.

Cultural differences are normative and go to the heart of how a person sees the world and their place in it.

For example, if a liberal was asked to place the words "government" and "society" into an importance hierarchy, they most often would say "government" and then "society," or make one equal to the other. Conservatives would put the two words in the opposite order, and would never make them equal.

Tendencies such as this go beyond ideology and reflect a basic view of the world.

Another example is something that conservatives see as pure arrogance and which liberals assume as automatically as a knee-jerk. Liberals know that others who hold their views are intelligent. Further, if those who agree with them are creative and artistic, then they are VERY creative and artistic.

This is one of the reasons they award each other honors and prizes. Michael Moore won an Oscar. To nonliberals, the Nobel Peace Prize has become a joke in both senses of the term. Some of the winners are so ridiculous that all one can do is laugh, and other selections appear to be purposeful jokes, but not evidently to the people who award them.

Explaining this to liberals is like trying to explain to a modern Western man why he should be wearing a dress.

Recently in a Tacoma Washington newspaper's life section was a front page story about Ron Reagan Jr. The header of the article was in 2-inch font. The subhead read, "The son of the late Republican president takes a nuanced approach to deconstructing all things ____."

Would you like to fill in the blank? Of course, the word was "conservative."

He was quoted as saying that right-wing radio hosts "are saying (things that) often (are) ugly, stupid and dishonest. And they don't often get called onto the carpet for it often."

Liberals find no irony in these types of stories, else why are they on the front page of the most popular part of a newspaper, or why are they so important as to merit screaming-size headings, or why has the same paper likely never printed an article on Reagan's other son, Michael, who has had a conservative talk show for decades?

Culture is one of the reasons that liberal media commentators will swear to you that the press is not biased. In their experience, they are simply reporting the basic structure of the universe.

Culture also explains why leftists attack others as "ugly, stupid and dishonest," and have a visceral, illogical dislike of people who they normally would champion such as Sarah Palin and Clarence Thomas.

Conservatives don't do this, at least not with the same passion, not because they are more intelligent or more nuanced, but simply because they see the world differently.

Conservatives don't assume you are smart if you agree with them. They simply believe that a logical person will follow their logic. They don't give each other many awards and prizes. Why should a person be honored because they did what any other rational being would do?

Just as the basic structure of reality is different between a Buddhist and an atheist, so to a certain extent, the world is seen differently by conservatives and liberals.