In my business — psychology — unyielding, strident insistence on extreme positions brings failure in marriage, career and business. Stubbornness about "principles" with no effort to understand and work with other views causes isolation and feuds, in every area of life.

And yet when it comes to politics, the staunch and unbending are yelling. The right sneers that fellow GOP-ers are "RINOs" (Republicans in Name Only); the left bashes "moderate Democrats" in favor of a "good, progressive, populist message," to quote Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Partisans beware! Some of your most cherished political attitudes may be malleable! Researchers report that simply answering three “why” questions on an innocuous topic leads people to be more moderate in their views on an otherwise polarizing political issue.

The research, described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, explored attitudes toward what some people refer to as the ground zero mosque, an Islamic community center and mosque built two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City. When the Islamic center first was proposed it sparked a heated debate pitting proponents of religious freedom against those who felt the center should be moved away from the site of the 9/11 attacks out of reverence for those killed by Muslim extremists.

Most Americans, particularly those under age 65, rely on health insurance offered through the workplace. Thus, given these unemployment trends, it comes as no surprise that the share of Americans under age 65 covered by employer-sponsored health insurance (or ESI) eroded for the tenth year in a row in 2010, falling from 59.4 percent in 2009 to 58.6 percent. However, the situation started deteriorating long before the Great Recession: The share of Americans under age 65 covered by ESI eroded every year from 2000 to 2010, decreasing by a total of 10.6 percentage points. As many as 28 million more people under age 65 would have had ESI in 2010 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level.

No demographic or socioeconomic group has been spared from the erosion of job-based insurance from 2000–10. Both genders and people of all ages, races, and education levels have suffered declines in employer-based coverage. Workers across the wage distribution, in small and large firms alike, and even those working full time and in white-collar jobs have also lost coverage.

Forget the small potatoes of the continuing resolution, now they want to take the debt ceiling hostage, and their potential demands read like the right-wing's bucket list — not only to delay implantation of the Affordable Care Act for one year but to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, set a timetable for tax reform, block greenhouse gas regulations, reduce civil service pensions, eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and on and on. That it doesn't require the president of the United States to kneel in submission to General Zod of Krypton suggests only a lack of imagination (and perhaps that their membership isn't part of the Comic-Con crowd).

House leaders say stuffing the measure with all these "goodies" is the only way they can muster the votes to raise the federal debt limit by $1.1 trillion. Really? The GOP is so captured by wild-eyed fanatics that they'll plunge the nation into default, substantially raising the debt for many years to come, until everyone gives in to their demands?

Why don't they close the Capitol building and take the tourists hostage while they're at it? And that's not flagrant hyperbole compared to Sen. Todd Cruz likening those who allowed the health care reform law to pass and Germans who allowed Adolph Hitler to rise to power. It's getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the harm Republicans seem intent on inflicting the nation and any personal injury they might want to cause the innocent bystander.