During a pleasant lunch with a liberal couple, I praised Sarah Palin.  After a moment of stunned silence, the lady said, "Well, I'm not surprised if you deny the Holocaust.  Do you?"

Stifling my anger, I said, "Why on Earth do you ask that?"

"Well, that's the next step," she snorted.  "All of you hard-right extremists and evangelists are about to go farther down the path of Hitler.  How do you sleep at night?"

"That's most insulting and ignorant question I have ever heard," I tried to explain.  "Conservatism in this country is about personal freedom, and that's the direct opposite of totalitarianism, where the government owns everything – including you.  The next step for us would be a Libertarian, not a Fascist." 

The man chimed in.  "She's not talking about you; it's just the lunatic fringe, the wacko birds."

I knew she had included all conservatives as crazies.  I said, "I respect your opinions, but you don't respect mine.  Why is that?  Why do you assume the high moral and intellectual high ground?"

The couple looked offended.  "You have a right to your misguided opinions," she said.  "But lately you have been talking about repealing Obamacare, not raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars, and not believing in the settled science of global warming.  How could we not believe that your compasses have headed south?"

We changed the subject to the traffic, to the kids, and to the bill.  I lingered for a while for a needed extra cup of coffee.  I barely heard the man whisper to his wife as they left, "Where did we go wrong?  I thought he was our friend."

George Lemmond is a marketing professional and an adjunct professor at Georgia State University.  His website is lemmond-ontarget.com, and his email is glemmond@charter.net.