Reasonableness vs. Fanaticism

For me, the paragraph below, lifted completely out of context from a Paul Krugman op-ed piece, illustrates one of the differences in the way conservatives and liberals think.

So could the euro be saved? Yes, probably. Should it be saved? Yes, even though its creation now looks like a huge mistake. For failure of the euro wouldn’t just cause economic disruption; it would be a giant blow to the wider European project, which has brought peace and democracy to a continent with a tragic history.

The key passage is "Should it be saved? Yes, even though its creation now looks like a huge mistake."

If there is a European equivalent of the US tea baggers, they are the ones who are saying "screw the Euro; it was a mistake from the beginning and this is our opportunity to kill it.  To hell with the the social and economic disruptions." `Actually those people probably do exist in all the European countries to a certain extent, but they don't have very little voice and no power.

Unfortunately the U.S. case is different.  The tea bagger influence is so strong in the Republican party that John Boehner has already expressed a willingness to shut down the government when the debt ceiling comes back as an issue in January. And he's supposed to be one of the reasonable ones. With luck, he won't still be the Speaker, but he probably will be.