A liberal is a conservative who has been through treatment.

Recommended Garrison Keillor: "Homegrown Democrat"

The fear of catastrophe could chill the soul but the social compact assures you that if the wasps come after you, if gruesome disease strikes down your child, if you find yourself hopelessly lost, incapable, drowning in despair, running through the rye toward the cliff, then the rest of us will catch you and tend to you and not only your friends but We the People in the form of public servants. This is a basic necessity in a developed society. Men and women make love and have babies in the knowledge that if the baby should be born with cerebral palsy or Down syndrome or a hole in its heart and require heroic care, the people of Minnesota and of St. Paul will stand with you in your dark hour. If you are saddled with trouble too great for a person to bear, you will not be left to perish by the roadside in darkness. Without that assurance, we may as well go live in the woods and take our chances.

This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one and then you turn into a Democrat. A liberal is a conservative who's been through treatment.

"Homegrown Democrat; A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America."

• "Republicans have perfectly nice manners, normal hair, pleasant smiles, good deodorants, but when it comes right down to it, you do not want them to be monitoring your oxygen tube or running your child's school. Like the hall of mirrors at the carnival, they are all about perceptions, the party of Personal Responsibility, which conceals enormous glittering malice and is led by brilliant bandits who are dividing and conquering the sweet land I grew up in. I don't accept this."

• "Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, all American values worth conserving. The people who call themselves conservatives stand for tax cuts, and further tax cuts, annual tax cuts, the only policy they know. Cut taxes. Use the money you save to buy a gun and an attack dog to take with you when you drive the Hummer out of the security gate of Republicanville ..."

• "Lord knows we [liberals] can be earnestly boring. Oh God. We sermonize about the Unmet Needs of the elderly urban Indian and the dyslexic lesbian and the emotional disadvantaged Estrogen-American and we promise the moon on a string and it bores the eyeballs right out of people."

• "Defending the powerless against the powerful is a basic task of government, an article of faith in the America that I grew up in. Walking into the supermarket, you are powerless to investigate the meatpacker who packaged these Glo-Brite wieners so the government does it for you. The government is there to do battle with those who would sell you cars that are firebombs to TV sets that cause cancer in small children or vitamins that make hair sprout on your hands or hamburgers made from deceased springer spaniels."

• "Faith is private. It demonstrates itself in good works and love of neighbors but it doesn't need to puff up and blow a horn and bang on kitchen pans. ... When you try to find the love of Christ at work in the Republican Party, it may take awhile. The Christian Coalition was a Republican outfit with about as much to do with the Christian faith as the Elks Club has to do with large hoofed animals."