As a measure of how lefty my upbringing was, we had a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hanging on the kitchen wall. My parents were ’60s activists-turned-urban pioneer social workers, my father a charter member of Missouri’s New Left, and my mother a Greenwich Village folkie by way of the bus from Jersey. And so I grew up with endless New Deal and Great Society nostalgia — could it happen again?? — and watching tons of PBS.

Some of that viewing included The McLaughlin Group and occasionally Firing Line and whichever right-of-center guests made it onto Moyers and MacNeil/Lehrer. So, while we typically presumed that most conservatives were simply too callous, greedy, and probably prejudiced to willingly pay enough taxes to end poverty and save the environment, it was undeniable that some of them were pretty smart and made a few valid points here and there.