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I was driving home after being on the road after driving about five hours for a business trip today.

Usually, I listen to a combination of local talk radio and XM satellite radio. I usually tune into WLS’ Roe Conn show in the afternoons for some entertainment, to catch up with the news, and get traffic updates.

This afternoon, I took a different expressway back home than my normal route for this particular trip because of road construction signs warning of long waits and new lane configurations. While I was driving along the expressway, I saw a billboard advertising the local progressive talk radio station.

The ad inspired me to flip from WLS to the Air America channel on XM’s satellite service. The ad got me to act, but it sent me in the wrong direction because I didn’t want to change my AM radio dial. Maybe one of these days, I’ll dial in the local version of Air America to hear what’s going on over there.

While I was listening to XM’s Air American channel, I heard a progressive talk host spend at least 10 minutes asking a caller a series of questions about Iraq.

Each question “drilled down,” as the talk host said, deeper into the question of whether there were actually really bad guys (and gals) in Iraq who want to do harm to America. We all know there are bad guys there blowing up bombs, so it seems silly to even challenge the facts, but lets ignore that for this discussion.

When the caller wasn’t able to compare and contrast all of various factions who could be causing trouble or who might be friendly or who might be playing both sides for the best deal, he launched into an attack on John McCain.

The whole exercise had been a way to show that most people aren’t tuned into the particulars about who is blowing up the IEDs in Iraq, so therefore John McCain’s Iraq policy is all wrong, according to the host.

It would be the same as asking someone from Northwest Indiana to make a diagram of all of the major criminal figures in the region. I’m not sure that most people would be able to do so, but even without detailed knowledge of the local criminal element they wouldn’t mind the police being out and about enforcing the laws.

A broader perspective always comes in handy in these situations. People don’t need to know flow charts and flash cards to know if things are necessary.

I flipped back to local programming because it was a waste of time to continue listening to the silliness on Air America.

There’s nothing entertaining about listening to a laundry list of questions being asked of someone about arcane topics that don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. If you’re against the war, be against the war. Be proud of that fact and try to win over people who might be in favor of the surge.

Don’t base your disagreement on the fact that you know more about the various social, political and religious factions on the ground than someone else.

I don’t know how to fly an airplane, but I can appreciate that there are thousands of airplanes flying overhead right now. Not knowing the physics of flight doesn’t detract from my appreciation that air travel is a good thing.

Just knowing a lot of details about a subject doesn’t mean that your opinion is right.

Liberal talk radio would do well to focus less on all of the “beautiful mind” details and more on the larger picture.

The same could be said of the current Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama battle. If I was a Democrat, I’d demand that Hillary step back and look at the situation from a broader perspective, instead of focusing on the smaller details of running a campaign and hoping to win her party’s nomination.

Of course, if history is any guide — remember Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — progressives usually focus on the details and forget about people, especially if they get in the way of progress.

Technorati Tags: liberal, progressives

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