Without it we're doomed. I take your point about conservatives keeping the US from looking so much like France. What's amazing is the lack of conscious recognition by both conservatives and liberals that the power swing that resulted in a government dominated by Republican/conservatives over the last seven years nearly sank the ship of state. My fear is that we are likely to overcorrect. It's difficult to imagine a worse performance by anyone but certainly it's possible. The group of semiconscious power-starved ideologues that comprised the Bush administration took us so far off track that the correction could be lethal. The larger point is that conservative Republicans need liberal Democrats as badly as the reverse. Without a strong center each side must move further from the center to balance the other. The Nixon, Reagan, and now teetering Bush administration dramatically demonstrate the necessity for a strong and vital counterbalance. In one sense the sorry and weakened state of the once strong Democratic Party is as much to blame for the current state of affairs as is the incompetent, bungling corrupt, intellectually dishonest, Bush administration.