Forget Stephen Stills*:  Everybody's right if everybody's wrong.

The secret to untangling apparently insoluble arguments is to look at the motivating factors first, then the facts.  Of course both sides will disagree about their own motivations.  But it may be the case that both liberals and conservatives are more or less right about each other and dead wrong about themselves.  When truth isn't out in the open, look for it on the flip side.  The first trick to identifying the motivating factors is knowing where to look.  What is a "motivator" and where does it reside?  In this case, we shall label the motivators "values" and simply state that they reside in a "value structure."  A value here does not imply a explicitely acknowledged set of principles, but that group of inclinations or orientations which give rise to attitudes, behaviors, and even to principles themselves which are perceived by others to convey valuative meaning.  This "valuative meaning" implies a basic sense of moral worth.  The conveying individual gives the idea to another person that the conveyor and the recipient do, or do not, possess moral worthiness.  And what is worthiness?  Worthiness is an axiomatic concept rooted in an elemental sense of moral well-being.  It's nature may not be deducible, but its consequences are.  To convey the attitude to another that they have no value creates a reaction which, depending on the indiviudal, of  anger, repugnance, rejection, or guilt.

* "There's battle lines being drawn Nobody's right if everybody's wrong Young people speaking their minds, Are getting so much resistance from behind."

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