Like Lobos' bookstore window, gay-marriage, gay-religion, and gay-inclusion are part and parcel of a façade carefully crafted to make the more naive gays (and straights) feel less threatened, less different, and the gay lifestyle more acceptable. This is not to say the many gays demanding a place at the communion table aren't sincere (or individually welcome), just that the whole premise that a sin is not a sin is built on a weak foundation.

Interesting point he makes about straight supporters buying into the whole gay-is-okay agenda because it gives straight-liberals license to do as you please too; suggesting you see through the façade but are complicit in the deception. Or, to put it another way, you aren't exactly getting babes falling all over you, but fantasize it happening enough you want that door kept open? And for that, you'd willingly scrap centuries of human progress, stability, security, success and dignity? No, I don't count you personally among the debauched, but the remark rings true of a great many liberals who do support it, in whole or part, for that and like reasons. There is an interlocking logic to all such minority movements that coerce changes against prevailing wisdom and feeling. It is the logic of ‘strength in numbers’. Like Mussolini's fascists, the plethora of radical causes are a bundle of weak reeds so different one to another as to seem unlikely of combination or strength; yet joined together overcome most resistance – only to cannibalize each other in the final act. Some movements are strong in principle and don't, therefore, need to combine to prevail. Others are so weak they can only prevail through combinatorial coersion – meeting at least one of the criteria we associate with fascism. Perhaps, then, when we recognize such combinations we ought to recognize their underlying weakness and rethink our support of them.

Tradition and mores are also carefully crafted frameworks, but ones that have been hammered out over many centuries and oft tested and approved. This framework is sometimes constricting and unwieldy; but, unlike the bookstore façade, is inherently strong, serves real purposes, serves us well, and ought not to be lightly altered.

m. Regarding liberal position on abortion you responded “Abortions should never happen. But making them illegal won't help stop them anymore than making guns illegal will help stop murder by hand gun. The only way to stop abortions is to improve the education and quality of life of all our people. The better off we all are, the less bad things like this will happen. The answer is not more laws and illegality. We can compromise on partial birth abortions though. There is no reason for their existence.” – Wow! That’s quite an admission. If abortions are something you believe “should never happen”, then what has legal status to do with it? Wrong is wrong, and to the degree you support, participate or ignore it makes you complicit. Slavery was legal once too and people made similar arguments in defense of their apathy, so let’s rephrase your statement substituting slavery for abortion. Still okay with ducking the moral obligation? Do you really want to be in the position of condoning or defending something you believe to be that wrong? I can’t stop my kid from taking drugs either, but that doesn’t mean I condone it or tolerate laws that enable it. I take a stand against such laws. And, if my opposition to that behavior does not altogether stop the behavior, the simple fact of citizens objecting matters. We do what we can to push back against this corrosive trend. So, whether legal or illegal, if you know a thing to be wrong, why won’t you do your part to get it changed? Like the man said, “Evil is what happens when good people do nothing.”

No, we can’t stop it altogether, but we can cut down the number of murders. We know this to be true, because the number of abortions rose sharply with legalization and has remained high since. It is important that people are taught aborting a child is murder so they take pregnancy and its consequences seriously. Abortion and has gotten out of hand because we surrendered our responsibility to states and allowed courts to decide for us things properly decided by legislatures; and failed to hold either to account for passing laws incompatible with our mores.

The abortion rate among unmarried women under-44 jumped from 23.9 per 1,000 in 1973 (Roe v Wade) to 44 per 1,000 in 2005 (down from 49.2/1,000 in 1991). Recently, this rate has edged back up a little. The overall abortion rate was 1.4% women of all ages in 1973, and reached 2.4% by 1979 (a 71% increase). The ratio of abortions to live births was 196/1,000 in 1973 but almost double that (358/1,000) by 1979. Most of the increase, then, occurred from 1973 to 1980, the very years in which our courts and legislatures legalized and subsidized abortion. We don’t know the real number of abortions before 1973 because some states still outlawed the practice (though many states permitted abortion even before the court ruling, and more had changes in the works). However, we can take the 1973 numbers as a starting point approximating the true rate from there onward. We also no the official numbers for abortion varied little in prior years. In roughly the same period, we saw a drop in live-births from a steady 24/1000 in the 1950s and 1960s to 15.8/1000 in the 1980s and settling down to an almost constant 14.2/1000 from 1995 on. Therefore, it is false to claim legalized-abortion has no effect on the abortion rate, with many women (and couples) now relying on abortion as part of their contraceptive scheme in lieu of abstinence. These rates tell a story of women overall delivering 70% fewer children, with contraception and abortion representing principle factors of birthrate decline. Recent claims by abortion advocates of declining abortion only masks abortion is still nearly 70% higher than was the case before legalization and unlikely to come down much further regardless the hype or education so long as virtue and abstinence are not the focus of conduct or teaching.

Arguing current abortion rates can be reduced through education assumes two things: 1) teens getting pregnant have no idea what causes babies and 2) the current system has not been teaching this to the max for the past 22-years. I agree what is taught has not reduced teen-pregnancy very much, but I disagree that is due to a lack of teaching. Rather, the problem is the curriculum, as taught, is adding fuel to an already blazing fire. The 1970s marked a major paradigm shift in our attitudes toward government, from one of government should butt out of the personal to the ‘it takes a village’ mentality in which bureaucrats determine cradle-to-grave interventions that undermine parenting and weaken family structures. The result has been socially disastrous.

Similarly, arguing poverty as determinant ignores people (of all classes) today are far better off materially than we were a few decades ago (i.e., when abstinence and innocence were the norm). Your suggestion, then, that people get pregnant because they are poor and uneducated ignores welfare guarantees the poor have even less rather than more reason to practice abstinence; to which education can’t hold a candle. It also ignores the overall pregnancy rate of women of childbearing age has not changed nearly as much as the abortion rate (mature women are having fewer while immature women are having more). Ask yourself which of two cases is more apt to encourage/discourage abstinence. Case 1: the government guarantees you a stipend for each child conceived. Case 2: there is no such stipend and every child you conceive means you bear that much more burden. Either way, your typical welfare recipient isn’t especially bright or determined, or he’d have found ways out of his poverty; but, as he didn’t we can assume he didn’t make the obvious (to us) leap that deferring sex and focusing on skills have some bearing on his situation. Or, if he does, it takes backseat to other priorities. Assuming you are a young poor guy, you look on getting girls pregnant as a male prerogative, proof of virility, and ego trip (I can’t get my act together, but I am a ‘good daddy’ – based solely on you love your kids enough to hang around so they at least know they have a daddy). You are also up against considerable group hostility against advancement out of the group. Moreover, you heard all that abstinence stuff in school before you dropped out a year short of graduation until you felt like popping that dumb bunny if she said it one more time (so we see how well education works on this group). A similar profile can be made of poor-women with the main motivators consisting of getting out of the house at the earliest possible age, finding a protector, and getting and staying on welfare. Given these priorities, do you really expect education makes much of a dent? Given a choice between the uncertainties of breaking out versus guaranteed welfare when all you’ve ever known is relative poverty and a culture that preaches a stacked deck against you, you decide it just isn’t worth it and no reason you should try. In this culture, both ignorance and reproduction are assets to be exploited; whereas reaching for an education and deferred sex seem hopelessly stupid. So, a bunch of middleclass do-gooders insist the problem is we need to ‘educate’ these poor, dumb slobs; and pat ourselves on the back for the sentiment. How, do they react? Well, naturally, they tell us to shove our altruism where it doesn’t shine and with a stuck up attitude like ours, we deserve to pay their freight. Go figure!

Poor people prior to welfare had fewer kids than is the norm today precisely because the cost of kids is now underwritten by government. Poor people of today, even the poorest, ‘are’ materially better off than some middle-class of the pre-Roe era; yet the number of pregnancies and abortions soared the moment there was a combination of welfare, contraception, and subsidized-abortion. These rates have remained stubbornly high despite these advantages and despite a government effort and costs spanning three generations dwarfing the 40% of GDP we spent fighting WWII. Pregnancy does, indeed, interfere with job and earnings. Your argument, however, assumes other policy and paradigm shifts (weak family and marital attitudes, roles, entitlements, workplace changes, &c) don’t also play a role in creating the ‘single-welfare-mom’ phenomenon and dissipative lifestyle. Overwhelmingly, the girls getting pregnant and their boyfriends know perfectly well what causes babies but no longer care because there is no immediate downside to promiscuity. We have taught them it is okay to take risks because the nanny-state is there to bail them out; and free-of-charge abortion-on-demand is the chief way they are bailed. Between producing welfare babies and aborting unwanted babies, then, is simply an economic consideration.

We did not just make abortion legal; we made it profitable. Abortion-on-demand means you (the pregnant girl, boyfriend or parent) no longer bear the brunt of your mistakes because that is passed along to the rest of us. Bad enough we eliminated the economic deterrent, we wiped the stigma clean also, making double sure the way is open for kids to fornicate and abortion clinics to reap government payments. Had we kept abortion a private and privately funded matter, we probably would not have seen the huge surge in abortions that resulted. Roe cleared the way for doctors to practice abortion, but federal and state legislatures responded to feminist demands made that an entitlement. The effect has been three-fold. First was a tendency to take pregnancy less seriously. Second was doctors and clinicians began viewing and treating the unborn as appendages unworthy of the consideration given patients. Third, and most shockingly, was the creation of an industry devoted almost entirely to killing the unborn and to defending the practice. Prior to Roe, Planned Parenthood was an advocacy group devoted to abortion. But, with Roe, PP morphed into moneymaker and a powerful lobby protecting a vested interest in taxpayer-funded, legally-sanctioned infanticide. Technically required to counsel pregnant women (mostly teens) regarding their options, PP has no vested interest in actually doing so. Instead it emphasizes the joys of abortion, mutes the negatives, and deplores term-pregnancy as an abuse of women. PP has made frequent claims abortion is far safer than delivery, whereas the reality it is the opposite. Thus, PP’s advocacy, at best, puts women at greater risk and, at worst, subjects women to a combination of desensitization (to the loss of their unborn children) and traumatizing those incapable of desensitization; not to mention the 49+million children so far snuffed to which the rest of us have become indifferent.

Advocates insist there is no downside to abortion (other than to the ‘fetus’), but we know this to be untrue. At least some women complain they suffer significant mental anguish as a result of abortion, most of which goes unseen and untreated. For some this is immediate, but for many (perhaps most) it happens later as the doubt grows in them they made the wrong ‘choice’ (see http://www.nrlc.org/news/2006/NRL08/NewStudy.html ). PP claims it offers follow-on counseling to these women, but at least some women claim otherwise; that this consists only of counseling women to abort. On the other extreme, many women have become so desensitized to terminating children that abortion means little more to them than an alternative contraception. Little surprise, then, the largest single demographic of women repeatedly availing themselves of abortion is prostitutes capitalizing on taxpayer generosity to cover their costs.

One recent European study claims 3.5-times as many women now die from abortion than die giving birth ( http://www.afterabortion.org/PAR/V8/n2/finland.html, http://www.theinterim.com/2004/apr/03abortion.html ), whereas PP’s decades-long image of abortion ‘saving lives’ is built on a now disputed 1936 medical study. The more recent study is from a country more abortion-friendly than here. State of the art medicine has rendered both abortion and pregnancy safer than the 1936 study relates. Besides the mortality and mental risks of abortion, there are also significantly greater risks of cancer, injury, infection, premature & handicapped children, and trauma to women’s reproductive organs that can interfere with pregnancy and long-term health issues ( http://www.pregnancycenters.org/abortion.html ).

Wrap up

We’ve thus far covered affirmative-action, racism, environmental hype, tire-inflation, taxation, abortion-fallacies, sex-indoctrination, the gay-agenda, Biff Biden’s gaff, patriotism v nationalism v fascism, Keynesian fallacies, the proper identification of socialism, fairness (what is and isn’t), the non-equivalence of religions, logical inconsistencies, thought-suppression, job-loss responsibility, death-by-government, media-bias, educational-failures, the myths of socialized-medicine, and confuting ‘preference’ with ‘morality’. There was more in what you say that needs comment, but this covers the main points. I doubt we’ve “cleared things up” as you suggested, as, so far, you seem indifferent to what we have to say on these or any topic. But, at least I gave it my best shot and there are always others to read and reflect.

This concludes my long-winded reply. My many thanks to the proprietors for the use of the hall.

l. To: all religions teach basically the same things and are, therefore, morally equivalent –you responded: “I doubt they all teach the same thing, but the believers all think they are right despite having differing views on what right is. What I glean from this is that there is no cosmic right and wrong. What I believe religiously has a lot more to do with where and when I was born than anything else. So if we are conditioned through parental teaching to believe something without question, to take it on faith, how can we be so sure its right? I question everything.”

Your claim you “question everything” obliquely implies we don’t; whereas, in reality, you don’t appear to question much of anything. Your opinions are so safely PC, there can be no question you dare not think outside the lines. Therefore, it must be you allow others to do your thinking; taking all you ‘know’ from biased sources as though indisputable simply because they are palatable. If you questioned ‘everything’, as you say, then palatable would be suspect and all such assumptions invalid; including every assumption you’ve made within these pages. At some point, however, we all have to make some assumptions because every inquiry into the nature of things has a minimally observable limit beyond which we cannot see. For example, we assume the cosmos had a beginning, measure its rate of expansion from that, and, thereafter, theorize a Big Bang; only to find out later not all is neat and tidy because we started from an assumption not in evidence. Assumptions, then, are unavoidable if we are to make headway figuring things out, but always with the proviso we limit those assumptions and be ready to correcting those as prove weak or unnecessary. Also, questioning everything constantly and repeatedly is a sure way to go crazy because, then, you can never know where you stand or in what to trust (i.e., schizophrenic). Your remark implies I should do a better job of limiting my assumptions. Yet, I am the one offering facts and proofs to your assumptions whereas you have yet to produce a single proof of anything. The trouble is you are all assumption and no proof, no reasoning from facts, no evidence, no source checking, no bias correction, no openness to conflicting information or ideas, and, most seriously, no curiosity how things actually work. I gave you a list of liberal assumptions with which you could have had a field day. Instead, you blew more liberal assumptions my way as if that settled each matter.

Regarding your assertion there is no cosmic right or wrong. Humbug. Next you’ll be telling us you are non-judgmental. Had you believed that, you would not have been so quick to attack Kerwick on a presumption of racism. The idea there is no cosmic right or wrong is one of the more dangerous ideas about in the world. Stalin, Hitler, Manson, and any number of radicals and terrorists have resorted to that craven argument to justify evil or encourage it in others. Consider, then, the company you keep. The ‘no cosmic right or wrong’ argument is so much moral and intellectual dissimulation. Just because we differ in our opinions as to exact meaning and implementation does not mean it does not exist or is incapable of discovery. Rather, the insistence it doesn’t exist at all simply because our philosophies and theosophies imperfectly capture it means we have work to do getting it right. You are right that belief is just belief, but an imperfect belief in no way validates your nihilism any more than it disproves G-d. When you come hard up against your own fallibility, you may realize this; and, also, just how ‘blessed’ you have been despite our/your shortcomings. For all its accomplishments (and they are many), our science doesn’t even begin to fathom our universe or the existence of life; or replicate either. Our best medical science can’t restore a life once gone from the body or transfer mind and memories to a substitute. The best we've been able to manage is postponing death a little. So, unless and until we can do those things, we are just speculating as to the existence/non-existence of G-d; and even our understandings of ‘right and wrong’ continue to depend on a presumption of that existence.

Where next you say “What I believe religiously has a lot more to do with where and when I was born than anything else. So if we are conditioned through parental teaching to believe something without question, to take it on faith, how can we be so sure its right?”, then have you no free choice in the matter? G-d gave you free will that you can find him and rejoice in him, not cower and blindly worship. Turn your question around to ask ‘Whether or not because you have been conditioned to think a certain way, does that make the way, itself, wrong or just in need of refinement?’ Surely, there is something you can salvage from the wreckage of your theosophy? The problem I have with atheists is not they question religion, the problem I have is they throw the baby out with the bath water. Knowledge of G-d, like all knowledge, is a process of refinement with each generation adding something to the narrative. We can’t be sure, but we can reason as far as knowledge will take us. The rest depends on faith. Faith is simply the gap between knowing and trusting. When you get on an airplane full of jet fuel and rocket into the sky, you are putting faith in man and machine to return you safely to earth. That faith is predicated on some knowledge of the workings of aircraft and the machinations of men, but also on past results and, even, a little on that G-d at whom you scoff but worry may be annoyed by your indifference. Similarly, when you judge another guilty of murder and sentence him/her to death or long incarceration, you are putting faith in formulas and G-d sanctioned behaviors worked out long ago by folks wise enough to emulate that you are doing the right thing. You could, of course, chuck all that accrued wisdom and start from scratch each day, but who of us have that much time and intellect to waste?

No, not all religions are “morally equivalent”; nor are most religions responsible for all the evil we attribute to them. Religion is not G-d. Religion is man’s accumulated understanding of G d, our search for G d, our awe of G¬-d, and our reverence for G¬-¬¬d. To that degree, all religions are similar. However, none of those are moral questions. Therefore, to say all religions are morally-equivalent requires you look at each religion’s moral dictates and measure outcomes against a common standard. I say “dictates” rather than presumptions, opinions, musings, divinations, or preference, because it is ‘dictates’ (i.e., things religion demands of its devotees) against nature that define the moral culpability of each religion. We should be able to agree a religion that insists its devotees systematically and forcibly convert, enslave and/or slaughter the followers of its rivals is less moral than a religion that does no such thing. Yet, that is the equivalence you are making when you argue all teach the same things; that a religion we know to dogmatically promote religious dominance and violent expansion is the same as religions that do no worse than defend their own; confusing a religion founded, enlarged, and sustained primarily on the blood and debasement of its rivals with religions so tame as it takes a rebellion from religion for these others to survive against it. This is the same moral distinction we make for individuals, so why would we not admit this principle applies to groups of individuals attacked for their religious beliefs.

k. Your response to the ‘socialism inherently superior to capitalism; path-to-wealth’ liberal myth was: that only so-called “mixed-economies” work. What rot!

I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard that old bromide: “Our economy is mixed, capitalism alone doesn’t work!” Capitalism worked perfectly for many centuries before socialism came into the picture, and has been part of human civilization since the first man bartered flint for food. It works because it is natural as opposed to the contrived interactions of socialism. What has never worked is pure socialism, and even a little socialism is a burden on markets. What you call a “mixed economy”, is nothing of the sort. That is because socialism is uneconomic and does nothing to stimulate or complement economic activity. To the contrary, it bleeds the economy for its own ends. Why, then, should I work hard or risk my earnings in a market which socialists just want to suck the life blood right out of? The more we pile on socialism, the more disinclined entrepreneurs and workers refrain from making an effort. Why should they if government is going to provide their needs. This is especially true of those convinced of the economic benefits of socialism. So, the more socialism you add to the mix, the more damped becomes the economic response (motivation); killing investment in both capital and effort, until the whole thing collapses because the blood-suckers are demanding more than those still working can produce. People, in this situation, look to government to make up the deficit, but government does not produce anything so it can’t. Capitalism is economic; socialism coexisting within capitalism is merely parasitic.

As an example of your mixed-economy argument you cite “Education is something that we all need.” – So what? There is no correlation between getting a good education and socialism, other than as a negative. Education, like government is merely a service, not a product. Education’s benefits are intangible, long-term, and only add to GDP to the extent it turns out people capable of competing. If the focus is on producing drones and esthetes, education will not contribute to GDP. The permeation of socialist bilge disconnect from reality is one of the principle reasons our graduates enter the workforce functionally and intellectually unprepared, so, there too, your capitalist-socialist mix fails the economic test.

The fact healthcare is something “we all need” is a false proposition, and the fact you “need” or, more accurately, ‘want’ something does not automatically make it a “government issue.” Did we ‘need’ advanced medical procedures before they existed? Or did we only ‘need’ what was available and within our reach. What makes a thing something government ‘should’ provide is it is something only government ‘can’ provide and is unavoidably necessary. Defense against nuclear attack meets this criterion, the personal needs of every member of a society does not and can be safely left to us to handle. Beyond that it, is only a government question if we 'choose' to make it one. If it can be proved to be more efficient doing it that way (rather than privately), then you have a case for considering government as a supplier. Even then, you need not make it a monopoly. However, that is not a sufficient argument in and of itself. It also needs to meet the test of unavoidability. Otherwise, you are forcing one-size-fits-all solutions on everyone. Following your logic, a car to get to work, food, clothing, shelter, also meet your criteria of ‘need’ and, therefore, subject to government. How the heck did we survive thousands of years, then, without government providing us all these things? Nor does government do a particularly good job of providing even our most basic needs. Once you make us dependent on government, you live or die at the whim of an indifferent bureaucracy. I’d rather take my chances in a tank full of sharks.

Gay sex is not a moral issue, as you pretend. You are conflating what are mere desires and preferences with needs and values. There is no ‘need’ of gay sex and, therefore, no moral basis for it. There are only moral questions regarding its governance within a predominantly heterosexual society. Heterosexual values have virtue not simply because they are ordained by G-d or meet our approval, but also because they are species and cultural survival issues. Heterosexual society meets all the criteria of a self-perpetuating, internally-consistent society which homosexual society does not. Homosexual society cannot long exist without a robust heterosexual host; whereas, heterosexual society can both survive and thrive without homosexual society. This, like your healthcare demand, makes homosexual society parasitic. To be more than that requires it add something to the mix that improves our survival potential or creates tangible advantages within our culture. In the latter case, you could, at least, make a case gay society complements hetero-society (aka, symbiotic). Unfortunately for gays, it does no such thing. Gays add to our society as individuals, but nothing is added to the culture simply as an expression of sexual orientation. That leaves only the question of our shared humanity. Gays, as individuals, are entitled to the all the respect and protection any of us deserves. No more and no less. But, that does not entitle them to respect and protection of their sexual proclivities; and certainly not of any behaviors that are predatory or abusive anymore than we’d tolerate theft, drunk-driving, or crack-use. Will those, then, be the next socially-acceptable and protected ‘lifestyles’? Exploiting our schools to systematically stigmatize heterosexual values among our children is one such abuse. Public debauchery is another. The problem is and has always been gay extremists are unsatisfied keeping it to themselves, feel a need to recruit among the young and vulnerable, and push our tolerance beyond all limits.

i. planes flown into the Twin Towers and Pentagon were a Bush plot

To which you responded “…there are no educated people that really believe Bush masterminded 9/11 … Let the dead rest in piece.” – Really, then who are these guys: http://www.911truth.org/ . Members of this group include college professors, engineers, scientists, theologians, human-rights activists … in fact a pretty fair cross-section of the intellectual left. Nor are they the only tin-hats still convinced of and decrying it. Among middle-eastern Muslims (including most of their media and academia), the “Bush-did-it” theory is an undisputed ‘fact’. By “Let the dead rest in” [peace], do you mean we should give it a rest because the left is uninterested in our nation’s security? Or do you mean the 9/11 dead no longer rate our consideration?

j. putting healthcare in the hands of government results in better, less costly care with greater access

To which you responded “It will cost less(Medicare costs 11% less per participant than an average health care plan) per person, but the important thing is that getting sick shouldn't bankrupt you.” – Medicare cost are 11% less "per participant" only because the rest of us are subsidizing the difference, and it doesn’t bankrupt you now, unless of course you are willing to spend everything you have to keep breathing; which is, of course, the same situation we’ve had as long as we’ve had medical practitioners (aka, witch doctors). You are comparing unequal things. When you add in payroll deductions and employer contributions, Medicare/Medicaid costs us more rather than less. You can’t make something cost less simply because you have added a layer of bureaucracy to it. It still takes the same amount of doctor hours to diagnose and prescribe, the same clerical and nursing staff, the same consumption of medical supplies, the same housekeeping and sanitation costs, the same utility bills that must be paid, &c. When government takes over (assuming all the same services are maintained), that just adds another layer of administrative costs. The only way to reduce cost, then, is to start cutting something. Assuming you are right and the cost are indeed 11% lower, that means either 11% of something (actually more than that because we have to account for added government layer) must have been cut in the form of denied services, forcing doctors, hospitals, or doctors, hospitals and drug companies have to shave profits, and substituting cheaper (lower quality) equipment and supplies. Over time, doctors and hospitals stop investing in improvements. Their suppliers respond by making and selling fewer units, driving per unit costs up and sales further down until a new equilibrium is established. Fewer sales means slower technology advances. Quality of care suffers many times over what the savings represent. Lives that might have been spared or health maintained are lost, but there is no way of knowing by how much because there is no remaining benchmark once the last capitalist healthcare system has been scuttled. The remaining benchmark then is mediocre government run care.

I did a study of my own a couple of years back, and surprisingly found the total cost of healthcare in Britain (fully socialized) is slightly higher per person served than here. Conversely, health services there are atrocious (i.e., people sometimes die waiting months or years for services we get here in a few days. Resources stretched to the max, underpaid indifferent doctors, medical rationing, unsanitary conditions, people having to take taxis to hospital, shoddy recordkeeping, gross inconsistencies, black-market drugs, &c). Conditions are improving in Britain in some areas, but only to the degree they've realized you only get as good as you are willing to pay. Britain began paying doctors a little more because all the good doctors were emigrating out. Yet, in the same period, many of Britain's medical trusts have begun denying specialist referrals for a variety of 'social' reasons (e.g., smokers and fat people on the theory it will force them to adopt healthier habits). Your main complaint was the lack of access to the poor. So, I suppose I have to grant you this one point because under socialized medicine the access is, indeed, more equal – equally bad. But, the nurses are warm and caring I am told.

You began from at least one false assumption: that ours is not already a mostly socialized health system. OECD published comparative statistics by country in 2005 listing healthcare spending by country as a percent of GDP. OECD says 45% of ours was paid by government where in Britain it was over 90%. With the additions of PDP and SCHIPS, that figure is now above the 50% mark (OECD's figures are a little understated, however, in that it leaves out a lot of British self-care, black-market care, and alternative-care people in socialized countries are forced to turn to when sick and their system ignores them; and because OECD may be deducting taxes from GDP), with most of that going to those classified as 'poor'. That means our healthcare is at least 50% socialized. Poor Americans, therefore, already get 100% of their medical costs met; and even lower-middle class Americans are getting benefits that close some of the gap. Further socialization, then, is mostly a matter forcing the other half (you know, us ‘rich’ folks who don’t actually need it to get by) into accepting the same dependency.

The only thing still keeping this country from falling into the kind of medical morass socialized countries are in is wealthy and middleclass people who, by directly paying the cost of care, provide feedback in the form of demands for high quality care as a condition of the large sums we shell out. Remove this direct relation between provider and customer, and you have destroyed the only remaining reason providers' have to deliver high-quality goods that set the standard further down the feeding chain. Instead, you get providers looking to government for compensation for every service, referral, scan, lab test, and aspirin dispensed. There are plenty of fools who see 'free care' as beneficial, never quite realizing it isn't free and the quality of healthcare suffers the more you give someone else control over your health choices because quality turns on ability to pay.

In the U.S., those unable to pay can walk into any hospital in the country and demand services for anything from aspirin to brain-surgery, and cannot be denied basic services to the point some of our hospitals are now declaring bankruptcy. Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIPS, the Bush prescription drug plan, FDA drug regulation, &c are all socialism. It is programs like Medicare-Medicaid and bloated malpractice awards that are primarily responsible for the soaring cost of health. But, so too is our own insatiable demand for the best care possible.

Now, before you leap to the conclusion I just agreed with you, I see this demand as a good thing and the reason is simple. You willingly pay more for a high-definition TV or safer, more-efficient car, but whine over higher-cost, state-of-the-art medical equipment with a far better chance of saving and extending your life a few years. How much is a year of life worth to you? How much is getting your health back when disabled and unable to earn a living? Just as in any other market, demand for better, more efficient, life-enhancing products results in a higher cost, but also, over time, falling prices. As supply and efficiency grow and more doctors get in the game, cost drop from the level of luxury medical procedure to reasonably priced consumer item. If price falls too low, provider interest lessens, causing a shortage and demand for something now expected by the consumer. Let's say you have arterial congestion and can't work at age 45. You should have had another 20-years to retirement in which to build up savings; but are now looking at 60% of current earnings forever. Inflation grows at 3.7%, so by age 65 that 60% of earnings is effectively 28.7% and still falling. But, not to worry, you can count on government to maintain you in the style to which you are accustomed, right? Instead of retiring on disability and praying you make it, let’s say you decide to pay $25,000 out of your own pocket to get some greedy doctor to clean out those choked arteries of yours. Instead of sitting home on disability then, you get back to work after just a few weeks of recovery, resume 100% of earnings, and an expectation income will pace inflation. Let's say you currently make $69,000 gross (average for a white guy). 40% of that is $27,600 representing your lost income. That means by paying out of pocket, you recoup the loss you would have suffered in less than one year. Moreover, you get to claim most of that as a tax deduction. More likely, your company-paid health plan will pay 80%, so you only have to pay $5,000 out-of-pocket and your payback is just over two months. Put in those terms, $5,000 is a bargain.

My parent's healthcare as a percentage of income was much considerably than mine, but, then, they did not have nearly the choices I have today. I can still get the kind of care they got and at a fraction of the cost they paid for it. But, why would I want to pinch pennies that way? Doing that, I can die young the way my father did. It is not 'medical costs' that have soared past inflation; it is ‘medical miracles' that have soared. If you only look at the cost of medical to everyone then, yes, it is going up. But if you look at each new medical technology and track its cost as it applies to you, it comes down from the introductory cost and, at some point soon, becomes both affordable and indispensible. Most of the soaring costs are born by the rich (where they belong), but socialist healthcare proponents never mention that. They just report the more alarming picture skewed by luxury items going to keep super-rich centenarians breathing. The real medical cost then, like every other new commodity that comes our way, goes down as both supply and demand for it increase.

Let's say that instead of being able to manage your own medical destiny, we get fully socialized care as they have in Britain. There, you don't get to decide you need that surgery or MRI. Government decides that for you; and, assuming they decide the cost/benefits of having you healthy are less than leaving you on disability … well, I guess you are just S.O.L. That happens in Britain far more than Brits care to admit. Don't think Britain is a fair comparison? Canada's not much better, and getting worse so quickly that Canadians are jumping the border to get their major care here (Canadian government has even been advising people to sneak over). Sweden? They have the same problems as Britain and a drug black-market that puts Britain's to shame. So, be careful what you ask for.

Access to health is not restricted by wealth, as you claim (unless you want to count those of us who have been denied services for our kids because we make 'too much' to qualify – something I have experienced directly). I have also seen situations where access is bad for poor and middleclass alike, but that has to do with bureaucratic penny-pinching and constraints on what can be charged for services, both artifacts of governmental interference. Even so, we manage with a little persistence (as do the poor) to get what we absolutely must have. People are not dying in the streets as in third-world countries nor from waiting interminably as in Britain. Those too poor, go right in little different from you or me. The truly rich pay premium to get preferential treatment, but I am far less inclined to begrudge that than the preference given the poor, many of whom take advantage of those of us who pay; and I don't even begrudge that so much as how it undermines our values. I do agree the quality of care the poor get is not as good as that of the ultra-rich, but so what. It is almost the equal of yours and mine (by law), and that isn’t so bad and better than anywhere else on the planet. Sorry, but the picture you paint of our health system denying people because they don't or can't pay is bogus.

Next you said“Access to doctors and medicine should not be restricted by wealth. Socializing insurance is a moral imperative.” – Applying this standard, there are no material objects for which there is not a “moral imperative” (immaterial objects too, for that matter). To rise to the level of a moral imperative demands a stronger argument than just “we need it” or “want it”. Hey, I need food. Is it now a moral imperative you supply me with food? How about if I am perfectly capable of supplying my own food (however much of an effort that may be)? Next you’ll be claiming piracy is a moral imperative or that forced blood-donations are a moral imperative. Where does this mandated ‘yours is mine’ nonsense stop? As to your claim "I don't support socializing health care …", stop kidding yourself. You do and you just did. Mandating health coverage IS socializing healthcare! Anytime government interferes in personal or private outcomes, by definition that is socialism. Dictating insurance companies (private entities) provide services to people unable to pay, is interference in both the private and the personal.

You go from there to state “There is no advantage to competition among insurance companies. Cutting costs for them amounts to reducing coverage and violating the rights of patients. I don't support socializing health care itself though, just the insurance companies” – By “just the insurance companies”, I assume you mean you favor socializing private companies as opposed to socializing the services they provide; ignoring there is no real difference. No advantage? None? How about the price reduction that comes from companies competing to get your commerce? When there is only one source for a product, we call that a monopoly and the company (or government) that has such a monopoly is free to charge whatever we are willing to pay. It doesn’t even have to be conscious gouging, the company or bureaucracy simply becomes indifferent to us and to what is reasonable. Competition, then, is an important feedback mechanism informing suppliers when they are overcharging because someone else is supplying it for less. In point of fact, there is no single right price for the things we buy; only what we are willing to pay. If too much, we don’t buy and demand drops; the seller lowers his price to get the best profit overall. That, then, defines the ‘right price’.

How, then do you arrive at cutting costs violates ‘the rights of patients’? What rights? Patients do have rights. They have a right to decent care, but decent care is contextual. Are you now arguing we should pay more for healthcare rather than less? We [patients] have no more ‘right’ to a higher [set] price than a lower price for any given commodity; only the best price we can negotiate. Cost-cutting is mostly something outside our control and involves eliminating things we either don’t pay for or refuse to pay for. The only way that results in a lower quality of care, then, is either when we [patients] choose to cut costs or no longer have any further say. Making government the arbiter of what services will or will not be allowed is the surest means of guaranteeing that happens, and it is that which violates our right to choose or refuse a higher level of services that may cost us a little more. What you are defending, then, is ‘entitlement’ to services you can’t afford but, nonetheless, expect others to pay for you. In that instance, cost-cutting simply means you can no longer demand a level of service you’ve come to expect but have not earned. ‘Rights’ in that context is piracy.

Here’s a rule-of-thumb to follow: anything we can do for ourselves, we should do ourselves and keep government out of it. That which we absolutely can’t do without and can’t do for ourselves (without governmental assistance), can be negotiated with government to arrive at some least invasive formula. Everything else not fitting cleanly into one of these two categories, by its very nature, is socialism. Socialism, then, consists of any unnecessary intrusion by government into private matters large and small; having as an implicit or explicit object a commonly desired yet unnecessary need.

Perhaps you never heard the Golden Rule either, i.e., 'Those with all the gold make the rules'. In markets, the means to pay for a thing is indistinguishable from the thing itself. When government dictates to private companies the services they must or can provide, the resulting costs must either be spread over remaining (non-entitled) consumers or else services must be curtailed to keep costs from rising. Either way, it is those who pay who are fleeced. Those who control the cash call the tune and, invariably, the tune they call is to cut costs. No one does this more than does government because we have no recourse against government. Once government mandates that poor people get free care, the next higher tier realizes they are now at an economic disadvantage. So, what do they do? They start clamoring they can't afford it either and demand comparable benefits. And, so on, until enough of our least productive denizens take what began as charity has become an 'entitlement'. This is true whether we are talking about healthcare, housing, heating-oil, food-stamps, condoms, jobs, transportation, communications or luxury goods having no discernable justification. So, all you have really done is created an expectation undermining self-reliance.

h. On characterizing ‘objections to the homosexual agenda as bigotry’

You said “What is the homosexual agenda Bob? I think they pretty much just want you to stop beating them when you see them out and they probably wouldn't mind getting married. I say let them. I don't care what anyone else does. Just don't ever force a church to marry gay people and we are okay by me. Marriage, because of the way people are, is not a religious institution any more but a legal one. All the other value it has comes from you. Gay marriages can't make your marriage mean less.” – It is really sad when the best rejoinder you can come up with is to accuse your opponent of “beating up gays”. When is the last time you heard a report of straights beating up actual gays? The last time I read of it was over a decade ago. Do you seriously not get it that some gays are equally intolerant and violent? Gays are no more prone to violence, but also no less. Instances of straights abusing gays are pounced on by the media, so we have little reason to worry that will go unpunished. What doesn’t get reported, however, are instances of gays assaulting heterosexuals. Invariably, when this, happens, the media fails to mention the sexual nature of the assailant or that the assault was bias driven; instead, vaguely characterizing it as an altercation, mugging, or senseless attack. The media is thoroughly disinterested in violence and intolerance by gays. The image of straight-America still and overwhelmingly abusing gays (after decades of cultural abhorrence) is hype by radicals with which to silence critics. What has reversed the incidence is a prevailing culture and legal strictures that now shield gays where once it protected straights. That means we have a situation in which gays can attack in confrontations with some impunity (both from the media and the law, and with the full support of citizens ignorant of the reality). Meanwhile, straights in the same situation, avoid mixing it up with gays knowing the media will pounce on them and accuse them of starting it. We’ve seen the same shift in race and gender relations (courts, media, and opinion siding with the perceived abused group) and for much the same reasons. Whichever side overwhelmingly has the law on its side, you can be pretty sure they will be the ones exploiting the advantage that gives them, and the ones disfavored will be the ones avoiding trouble and abjuring feelings. This is just human nature independent of our orientation.

You are wrong regarding marriage being a legal institution. It has been a religious institution from time immemorial. Until recent times, couples looked to religion to bless our unions with children, a feat same-sex union can’t match and without which marriage has no real meaning. Only by stripping marriage of its primary function (childbearing & rearing), can the two be equated. What you misattribute as “… because of the way people are, it is not a religious institution any more …” assumes it was people who dropped the religious angle. Either that or you are suggesting people are, now, fundamentally different (funny I don’t recall any fundamental change in my makeup). So what you really mean is: because gays are the way they are you demand we reduced marriage to a legal status only. But, and despite gay claims to the contrary, actual gays (those with no interest in a hetero relationship) represent a tiny minority. To that you can add a few who are sexually indiscriminate. The rest of us are overwhelmingly straight, regardless our tolerance.

It has only been in the last two centuries that government has assumed the role of religion in defining marriage by converting it into a legal and tax status. Throughout time, every culture and every straight couple has sought the blessings of religion to sanctify our marriages. Never, in all that time, have people instituted marriage primarily as a legal status. Always, that has come later and always with the proviso it remains a religious matter foremost. Also, in all that time, never before did homosexuals conceive of a need to be matrimonially equal (making the notion a modern ideological one). Government is the interloper here, and too much meddling by government has always resulted in impediments to marriage, with long-term effects that are destructive of civil society, of that which binds us together as a culture with a vested interest in a future. I suppose we should have seen this coming when government first offered us tax-breaks in exchange for taxing our incomes. Soon, government was insisting we have marriage certificates to prove our married state in order to get tax-breaks it cooked up to better guarantee our complicity with the theft. Next, government signaled hospitals (and other venues) to restrict patient access else bear liability should anything go wrong. Now, government wants to reduce marriage to the status of economic unit devoid of sanctity; effectively destroying the one real reason adult males have for entering into and honoring permanent, monogamous, stable, child-benefitting relations. We, the people, did not make or cause this shift in attitude; government in the guise of a handful of unelected judges and ideologues did that to us and against our protestations.

I do not doubt gays want something akin to marriage, but why insist on it having the same meaning and sanctification when that is not possible. Gays are free to concoct their own rituals and religions if they feel this same need, but are no longer unsatisfied with that. Now, they insist we must bend our religions and values to conform to them and theirs. Well, I am sorry, but I do not share their view of religion and have no desire to have my beliefs compromised. I can empathize they cannot accomplish a thing they most ardently desire, but, all this accomplishes is to trivialize something important to the vast majority of us who are not gay.

That raises another dimension to this debate you have not thought fit to consider, so I will. Not all of the proponents of this change are as high-minded as you. Some are less interested in sanctifying “gay-marriage” than in destroying marriage as an institution and a blessing. They care less a few million gays are made happy than that religion is, hereafter, ridiculed and abandoned. A few of these are gay, but that is incidental to their religious antipathy. I, of course, refer to extreme-secularists. They are hoping this drives a nail in religion from which it cannot recover as billions of straight couples find less reason to forge sanctified unions if it is to have no greater meaning than a secular sexual pairing. We can argue same-sex unions would have served as well, but these radicals were not mollified by that because satisfying religious-gays was never the real goal. No, they wanted this pushed farther. To these extremists, the destruction of marriage itself was always the goal knowing this is the most effective way they can spike religion.

You ask “What is the radical gay agenda.” Okay, since you asked, here it is:
• toleration of public displays of gay sexual behaviors not generally tolerated in the general population heretofore (be it homo or hetero)
• indulgence of public sexuality among heterosexuals, the better to breakdown resistance to the more flamboyant homosexual culture
• the elimination of any and all restraints on sexual pairings (sanctions pedophilia, bestiality, and similarly predatory behaviors)
• forced sexual indoctrination of children emphasizing homosexuality
• relegate any and all valid complaints against this agenda to the status of ‘hate-crimes’
• specially protected minority status having no legitimate justification

Again, this is the agenda of a minority of extreme gays misrepresenting the overall gay community; who, nonetheless, influence that community strongly and define its imperatives. It is not homosexuality, per se, to which conservatives object, rather, we object to having thrust on us, our families, and our culture values offensive to our natures and G-d. We are no longer allowed to isolate ourselves from this culture because, then, we are homophobes in dire need of diversity training and similar brow-beating until we acknowledge and accept the establishment of homosexual values in our midst and on our children. Nor is it just us ‘homophobes’ complaining. There are plenty of conservative gays speaking up against this agenda; among them Tammy Bruce, one time champion of the gay-feminist left (see http://www.amazon.com/Death-Right-Wrong-Exposing-Assault/dp/1400052947/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241557202&sr=8-1 ). And, there are many gays pushing for greater acceptance and recognition (also mistaken regarding conservatives), but without the radical agenda ( http://www.indegayforum.org/about/ ).

Demands of homosexual activists stated in “1972 Gay Rights Platform”:

• “Repeal all laws governing the age of sexual consent.” (i.e., legally enable pedophiles to have access to our children and teens for their sexual gratification — so long as said children “consent” to having sex.)

• “Repeal all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit.” (Once marriage is redefined, there can be no logical or ethical objection to any conceivable “marriage” combination, including polygamous “marriages.” By watering down marriage, “gay” activists and like-minded politicos [usually activist judges] remove this foundational institution’s intrinsic value.)

Demands of homosexual activists stated in 1987 (Homosexual) “March on Washington”:

• “The government should provide protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, public accommodations and education just as protection is provided on race, creed, color, sex, or national origin.” (forces all religious business owners, landlords and schools to abandon — under penalty of law — sincerely held and constitutionally protected beliefs and adopt a view of sexual morality that runs entirely counter to central teachings of every major world religion.)

• “Anti-homophobic curriculum in the schools.” (government-mandated homosexual orientation at taxpayer expense; already occurring in thousands of public schools throughout America; children are being taught the absurd notion that male-male anal sodomy is a perfectly acceptable, “alternative” sexual “orientation”; taught, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged such behaviors put participants at extreme risk for dangerous and often deadly infectious disease.)

• “The government should ensure all public education programs include programs designed to combat lesbian/gay prejudice … Institutions that discriminate against lesbian and gay people should be denied tax-exempt status and federal funding.” (Punishes churches, religious schools and religious businesses persisting in teaching traditional mores. Some jurisdictions have begun removing tax-exempt status from church related ministries refusing to provide “commitment ceremonies” to homosexuals.)

• “Public and private institutions should support parenting by lesbian or gay couples” (now mandated in many states such as California and Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities’ adoption service was recently forced to close down because it refused to assign children to homosexuals for adoption.)

Noted homosexual activist/pornographer Clinton Fein addressed the “gay” agenda in a 2005 article titled, “The Gay Agenda” in which he made the following incitements: “Hate Crime laws are just the beginning. Once those are passed either federally or in all 50 states, begin campaign to eliminate homophobia entirely.” “Homophobic inclinations alone, even without any actions, should be criminal and punishable to the full extent of the law.” “Make sure that gay representation permeates every level of governance.” “Demand the institution and then wreck it. James Dobson was right about our evil intentions. We just plan to be quicker than he thought.” “Reclaim Jesus. He was a Jewish queer to begin with, and don’t let anyone forget it.” So, here, we have acknowledgment from the pen of a radical gay that 1) there is a gay-agenda, 2) suppression of heterosexual preference and thought is part and parcel of that agenda, 3) a program to secure unassailable gay power, 4) the wrecking of traditional society, institutions, and mores, and 5) a malignant antipathy against both religion and people of faith. Whether or not you agree with it, even you must acknowledge this constitutes an agenda. More than that, it is an assault against society and its preferences, the vast majority of whom are not gay.

By the way, if you are straight and conventional, you are homophobic in the eyes of at least some radicals. Being liberal is no excuse.

g. Regarding ‘Charter-schools are bankrupting public-schools and lowering teaching standards’, you responded “Charter schools are a joke. We should nation[a]lize education. Private schools should exist, but be completely private. I'm fine with that. But the cost to teach a student would go down dramatically if it were nationalized. Having more buildings, principals, payroll services, electric bills, etc. is ALWAYS more expensive than having less.” – No doubt you get your factoids straight from NEA.

In all the history of nationalizing things (utilities, oil wells, healthcare, agriculture, highways, &c) the impact on cost has been up, not down. Moreover, nationalization eliminates the competition driving improvement; resulting in stagnation. This principle is no different as applies to education. Nationalization is just monopolization-by-government, with all the negatives that implies.

Charter schools are ‘not’ private schools because they are regulated in all states to provide the same curricula, level, and quality of instruction as public schools. The cost of operating charter schools, however, has been shown demonstrably less than public schools (average charter receives less than 2/3 the funding of average public school per student – http://www.edreform.com/charter_schools/funding/ ), making them a taxpayer bargain. Charter schools educate 11% of our students enrolled in just 3.5% of our school facilities (i.e., 3 times as many students per school). Many students of charter-schools are non-white of lower-class and poor families; for whom private schooling is out of the question. 40% are from families poor enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies and half are minorities (compared to a third in public schools). Charters have been getting a good many special-needs kids farmed out by public schools. One effect this has had is to lower charter school scores relative to public schools. Public-school advocates then exploit this as proof charter schools do a ‘poorer job’ of educating; when, in fact, they are comparing apples to persimmons. Parents of charter school students, however, are delighted with the results far more than is the case among public school parents. Partly, this is an attitude they bring with them (dissatisfaction with public schools is the prime reason most switched), but also it is a reflection of schools that do a better job, target needs, and genuinely encourage parent participation (not just the usual PTA banter). The National Center for Educational Statistics bias is predictably pro public-school (it is, after all, a government creature); despite which, NCES consistently finds no discernable difference between charter and public school test scores. Predictably, NCES’s comparisons ignore the many ‘extras’ with which charter school augment standard instruction.

Over the past century, as government has tightened its monopoly on education, quality of education has suffered measurably. The emphasis in education has shifted from turning out leaders to turning out drones, from quality to quantity, from emphasizing performance to least-common-denominator equity, from getting-ahead to no-child-left-behind. In a minority of cases this is beneficial, yet overall it is contrary to the true purpose of having an educational system. If the main object of education is to provide leaders, then emphasis should be given to fast-tracking the most promising. Our culture, however, has developed a strong aversion to standout individuals at odds with our foundational notions.

Once upon a time in America, you had to take an entrance exam to get into most high schools. Samples of pre-WWI high school entrance exams are impressive and, easily, the equal of modern college entrance exams. High school graduates, then, were expected to know something and be prepared to step into the leadership roles we now expect of advance-degreed college grads. There were social impediments to entrance, and needed correction; but the principle of a multi-track education system is still sound. Essentially, that means we all we have succeeded doing is delaying the age at which our best and brightest are prepared to start because politicization now trumps good sense by pushing one-size-fits-all standards for all pre-collegians. We have created a situation in which the mentally-ordinary are encouraged to fail and the mentally-challenged can’t help but fail. To get around this, we create thinly disguised subclasses of students (gifted, challenged, &c), all of whom are, nonetheless, streamed together for socialization purposes to brainwash them out of realizing they are not unequally endowed; when that is patent nonsense to all but the most dense of kids. This is an unhealthy fiction to foist on children smart enough to realize the fraud, yet so trusting of their teachers they willingly make themselves believe the fiction (as do many parents). And, this is just one of many such fictions taught in our schools. Any wonder, we have a generation of children in therapy?

Because our workforce culture both stigmatizes those who fail to earn at least a high school diploma and disdainfully defines a wage not worth accepting, we guarantee at least some will depend on government to provide basic needs when they could be gainfully employed at less demanding tasks solely because they lack that all important sheepskin (now fairly worthless) for jobs just don’t rate that artificially set wage. We turn out hordes of tolerable technocrats, but few generalists having both a broad and deep understanding of the forces defining the world they’ll inherit and expect them to manage. A big part of the reason this happens is the emphasis put on equal outcomes; a fantasy which educators are especially apt to take to heart. We know to a dead certainty not all of us are born or develop equally. Some may excel for reasons we can’t even quantify. So, to make the average and ungifted feel more equal, we create labels and sops with which to offset natural differences (at the same time maintaining a secondary fiction gifted students are not fast-tracked). You can’t make ordinary students perform as if superior. The only way then to get equal outcomes is to damp the progress of those more capable (i.e., cripple the gifted scholar through unequal and inadequate measures of accomplishment). The gifted student can still get a decent education, but only by going outside the lines. The scholar has, thus, been denied the kind of motivation that used to be the norm and is now more often stigmatized as ‘unfairly advantaged”. Before they can overcome this barrier to their personal progress, the gifted student must recognize these disadvantages thrown in their way are artificial and unfair. If I were a bright student today, realizing there are barriers deliberately created to hold me back, I would look for ways to bypass any and all teachers favoring artificial outcomes.

Teachers and our education czars are not entirely to blame for this; parents and voters are also to blame for not expecting and demanding better. Some are even complicit in demanding the bar be lowered and flattened. If public schools were not so abysmal, I might agree with some (if not all) your assumptions. As they are turning out an increasingly shoddy product, I approve innovations (like charter) having some potential for pressuring educators (public and private) and school-boards into salvaging something. Failing that, we should increasingly privatize until, once again, we are turning out students taught how to lead. Charter schools are just a first step toward demanding better. This is not to say average and special-needs kids are to be abandoned. We have resources to do both and it doesn’t involve throwing more money at ‘the problem’. All it involves is restoring the paradigm and attitudes of the past we know to have been more successful. It is the obsession with educational equity that has resulted in a squandering of human potential, not any lack of money, resources, qualified teachers, or private schooling.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3062866.html

So what have we learned? We have learned: charter schools teach all the required stuff, plus extracurricular stuff for which they get no credit, have been doing a comparable job to public schools despite some obvious handicapping, and all at a bargain price. We have also learned that the change in emphasis in education from producing leaders to producing drones has cost us our competitive edge just to indulge a fantasy everyone must get the same education.

f. Agenda based Sex-education

You said “Opposing sex education is pretty irresponsible. So is endorsing sexual promiscuity. But I have to remind you that telling kids not to do it isn't going to work. Also, sex ed has nothing to do with teaching children how to have sex or that sex should or shouldn't be had. Its about anatomy and physiology, maturity as it pertains to puberty, and awareness of birth control and STD's.”

You have to remind me? Teach your granny to suck eggs, youngster!

A little girl asks her daddy where babies come from. So, being the good, new-age sport he is, the father launches into the whole gristly story how daddy mounts mommy and sticks his thingy inside her, the sperm come out and race to find the egg, the egg slowly grows into a baby inside mommy’s stomach, and finally, after nine months of vomiting, bloating and staggering under the load, mommy goes to the hospital where (after a lot of screaming and crying and sweating and grunting) the baby erupts out her vagina. His daughter big-eyed and taking it all in says, “But, Becky says baby’s are brought by the stork, and I said that’s stupid ‘cause mommy told me last Christmas she wouldn’t mind if Santa brought her another one. Did we have a baby, daddy?” The point of this joke is that innocence is precious and, once lost, there’s no getting it back. We only get to be innocent once, yet your manic ideology seems determined to rid us of it.

First of all, I said nothing about “opposing” sex-education. What I said is: liberals are convinced that opposing “the teaching and endorsing of unrestricted sex” to our kids is “irresponsible parenting”. Or to put it another way: it is less a question children should be prepared to deal with sex than the way it is being taught is inappropriate. What is currently taught in our schools is scandalous and driven by a tiny minority of an already small community of like-minded people pushing a radical agenda with no real interest in children other than as a means of imposing their will. Those changes have to do with the legal and social status of adults – not children. When the frontal approach didn’t work, these hooligans decided to take the backdoor approach where we dare not oppose them – through our children. Even many gays are appalled this has been done in their name. Quite a few gays have kids, but it doesn’t take a doctorate to figure out there are at least some gays who don’t, won’t, and are far less interested in the wellbeing of children than in promoting their own ‘lifestyle’. To this end, radical-gays have been exploiting our kids for some time; ramming through an agenda (gay-rights) at our and our children’s expense.

It is clueless to think “… sex ed has nothing to do with teaching children how to have sex or that sex should …be had”. Here are just a few of the things currently taught our kids in the guise of girding them against ‘unsafe sex’: 7-year olds asked sexually explicit questions about themselves and others, condoms on cucumbers (explicit demonstration of contraceptive use taught to children as young as 10), lessons in homosexuality taught to 8th and 10th graders, condom-hunts in retail stores, condom-races in which mixed teams of boys and girls compete to see which gets the condom on the dildo first, conceptualizing ways to get closer to the object of your desire (body massage, bathing together, masturbation, watching porn together, erotic gifts, feeding each other sensuously), lubricants, experimenting, and role-playing (including homosexual role-playing; and if you refuse are stigmatized as a homophobe). Essentially, our kids are being taught to stalk one another ( http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed082703b.cfm ).

Real sex-education does not take years to teach, it takes a few sessions of one-on-one with some serious follow up to see the right lessons are mastered. What does take a long time is teaching judgment and abstinence. More critical than covering the entire Kama-Sutra and piling on porn is recognizing when it is time to teach the basics and when too soon. Teach it too soon, and you’ve pushed a sexually unready child into the adult world unequipped. Teaching more than the basics is both unnecessary and leaves nothing for them to discover as adults (when sexual self-discovery is more appropriate). There is no half-in, half-out to sexual awareness. It is either there or not. Once there, the child is no longer the innocent he/she was, and begins seeing every thing in the new sexual context. You must have experienced this yourself, so you know it to be true. We know children vary as to when this happens by as much as 7 years, yet our schools insist all children of a certain age and grade must get the same instruction as though equally ready to absorb that kind of information; and, they’ve been teaching it at the earliest possible age guaranteeing at least some will be traumatized. Sexually explicit information forced on an innocent is mentally and morally confusing, and more than a little frightening. Imagine you are a 7 year old girl and told that one day not so far in the future a baby the size of a cantaloupe will be yanked out of your vagina.

Despite knowing this can be traumatic and despite teacher misgivings, our schools spend an inordinate time and resources guaranteeing the sexual awareness of children. Don’t kid yourself they are teaching abstinence because that’s barely mentioned (other than to justify having it in the course title to mollify parents). This can have no other object, then, than to endorse promiscuity. Why not just give them subscriptions to Penthouse and be done with it? The learning of sex at the right point can be magical, but that too is stolen from us as young adults having already been brutally enlightened to the finer points.

The people teaching your kids have no special training or qualifications for this, and no particular vested interest in teaching it right (denials to the contrary notwithstanding). Tell me, how many hours did your child’s middle-school health-teacher spend verifying that teaching little Johnny the proper technique for installing a condom actually decreases or increases his chances of unintended impregnation or of contracting sexually transmitted diseases? Does she/he understand there is still some debate regarding the effectiveness of latex condoms? Or has she dismissed the possibility as poppycock not worth verifying and blithely telling her kids not to worry? Is he sufficiently impressing his students that ‘safer’ is not the same as ‘safe’? Does she realize condoms occasionally tear during coitus? Does he know condoms don’t protect against all STDs equally? Or, realize latex condoms sometimes go bad? Do they understand that by teaching ‘sex is safe’ they create an unrealistic expectation of safety that encourages promiscuity, and greater promiscuity increases the rate of disease and accidents regardless the precautions? What visual interactive demonstrations and evidence are they giving students accidents do happen with some regularity? Do they emphasize it to the point every child gets it, or are they satisfied thinking half are (maybe) ‘inoculated’ and that this somehow means ‘their kids’ are a little safer (when, in fact, they are more exposed)? How about counseling knocked up teens? Are they credentialed to do that? How many clinical hours have they logged? How many times have they successfully counseled a teen out of giving it up [virginity]? How many times have they wised up a bunch of giggly teens competing to see who gets pregnant first?

The only certain way to prevent pregnancy and STDs is abstinence, and the best means so far devised for increasing abstinence is to withhold sexual knowledge as long as is reasonable, and to consistently and insistently preach abstinence thereafter. This is not opinion, but fact. In the mid-1970s (when sex-education became the norm) teen pregnancy rates more than doubled. They continued to climb, thereafter, through the 1980s, but eased slightly in the 1990s as teacher training improved. Recently, however, they’ve begun edging up again; indicating we’ve gotten all we’re going to out of beefed up teacher training. Proponents love to cite the recent improvement as proof sex-education is working; stubbornly ignoring teen-pregnancy rates remain inexcusably high compared to pre-1970s rates.

I have had ample opportunity to observe my own son and his friends discussing the ‘highly scientific’ training they got at school, and can tell you the number of misconceptions they harbor are indistinguishable from those of my generation. I am still correcting misconceptions years later in my adult son and his peers, most of whom indulge in highly questionable practices with the normal cockiness of their age; convinced ‘that will never happen to me!’ This, despite most of them have already contracted STDs and gotten girls pregnant, but secure in the ‘knowledge’ they are practicing ‘safe’ sex. So, again, sexually-educated has not made these particular kids any safer or, for that matter, more knowledgeable in any meaningful sense.

Among the values slipping from our cultural grasp are monogamy, faithfulness, abstinence as virtue (i.e., saving it for the right person), sexual mutual respect (teens regularly refer to each other as “slut”, “ho”, “my pimp”, “my woman”, “my b^+ch”, “c#nt”, &c as though acceptable forms of address), marriage as a sanctified state, and the ability of men and women to see each other outside the sexual context. I don’t know when you grew up, but in my day very few had this level of sexual awareness prior to high school; and, even those, generally approached sex with something akin to awe and anxiety. Girls may have been perceived as sexual objects, and were sometimes verbally abused (usually after a breakup), but rarely were girls slandered by their own boyfriends at the height of or in pursuit of a relationship. So, the best we can say of this new culture is young girls are no more objectified than before sex-education. The worst we can say of the new culture is it brazenly despises and slanders girls barely cognizant of their role as sex-toys as early as age-11; and that that is a widely held teen attitude. To this, we can now add young boys as systematic sexual targets of the more predatory gays and their recruits.

This is nothing against teachers (I am married to one), but even teachers are bullied and brainwashed (against better judgment) into teaching garbage. It is not usually teachers who set the curriculum, even if many now defend it. That distinction goes to politicians and radicals. Had you asked teachers 40-years ago if they wanted the responsibility of teaching sex to other people’s kids, you’d have gotten a resounding “NO WAY!” Teachers are no more ‘expert’ in teaching sex to teens and pre-teens than are the parents of the teens they now trump. Most parents have had several years of dealing with kids, know their own kids far better than can teachers (for whom the individual student is one among many), and are at least as savvy as the average public school teacher. I have found teachers to be more than a little naïve and idealistic, to the point it overrides their judgment when every new ‘feel good’ agenda comes along. Moreover, teachers overwhelmingly balk at opposing school authority and their union (NEA) whom they regard as infallible; whereas parents don’t hesitate when it comes to protecting our kids from agendas. The typical highly-dedicated-to-her-profession, public schoolteacher is convinced the overall curriculum is something ‘scientifically’ worked out by greater minds than their own. They have faith in their system, and it is this faith which makes them susceptible to pressure. Despite knowing the average schoolteacher lacks critical experience and, sometimes, critical judgment, we expect them to do a better job raising our kids than we do ourselves; despite we are the ones with the greater interest in doing it right. A teacher may have a couple of sleepless nights knowing her sage advice fell on deaf ears, but she’s not the one who has to support that 14-year old through the next 9-months of pregnancy and (depending on values) many years of her and a child just when we had emptied-nest syndrome in sight.

The supposedly ‘professional’ sex-pert arrives unbidden from radical groups like GLSEN and Planned Parenthood volunteering unsolicited advice; few of whom have credentials that would stand the light of day. So, now, we have a case of the unready being taught by the unprepared co-opted and brainwashed by unofficial, unaccountable charlatans. Meanwhile, the ones with some real experience of life and a greater interest in the outcome (parents) are told this is a matter for ‘professionals’; and crowded out. Gee, how could any parent possibly object to that?!

We can debate indefinitely whether or not it is the teaching of unrestricted sex or opposition to it that is the more irresponsible, but you can hardly deny liberals fly to the defense of what is, in truth, an assault on innocence and on every parent’s right to a superior say in what, when and how our children are introduced to sex. If you must insist on forcing this drivel on our children, then at least have the decency to permit parents to teach it. There’s nothing particularly arduous in teaching sex (golly, folks have been doing that since way before post-modern education enlightened us), so it shouldn’t take a lot to get us up to speed. Then, maybe, teachers could get back to teaching little Johnny how to count and read.

d. Regarding the liberal fallacy ‘communism never killed anyone’, you responded: “Agreed. Stalin did though. He was a real bastard wasn't he?” – You really think communism never killed anyone, and chalk it up to a lone madman? Socialist totalitarianism is responsible for more genocide, politicide, and mass murder than all other ideologies combined. Even if you exclude Nazis and fascists from the socialist tally, communism still ranks worse than non-socialist governments. Don’t take my word for it; read through liberal-socialist, peace-activist Professor Rummel’s website (link in previous section). Nor is he alone in this assessment. Yes, Stalin was a bastard, but he was also a product of a political culture that brutally put the interests of state-objectives ahead of individuals and moral constraints. Lenin, Beria, Molotov, Khrushchev, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Song, Kim Jung Il, Castro, Che Guevara, and Duvalier were/are as bad (or nearly so) as Stalin, and shared the same socialist-statist mentality. Those were just the heads of states and their henchmen; but, behind these were legions of alienated, hostile-to-tradition, radical-socialist sycophants lending support. Stalin did not murder all those millions single-handed – he had lots of help. They were (and remain) the product of the same Marxist ideology and obsession with making drastic changes indifferent to consequences; most of whom have the ‘very best of intentions’ and with similar demands for ‘justice’, ‘equality’, ‘brotherhood’, &c we still hear today.

e. Regarding Media Bias

You said “The media is definitely biased. Some of it is conservative, some is liberal. Depends on the day and the channel or periodical really. What's your real point?” – Two real points, actually. First is, liberals overwhelmingly believe theirs is anything but bias while assuming ours is all bias. Second is, that the media bias is overwhelmingly liberal. The first is analogous to the guy with halitosis who never quite gets it. Not only is the media biased (and I agree with you some of it is conservative), but it is only liberals who get their shorts in a bind when confronted with the quality of their reporting is less than objective. Your media guys are in deep, deep denial – and, I gotta tell ya, from where I sit, it’s a hoot! When confronted with it, the liberal media invariably denies it all the more. We conservatives mostly acknowledge when ours is opinion; yet, unlike most liberal bias, ours is usually backed by something more than tired clichés. For example, it is only my opinion G-d exists. Conversely, I can make a darn good case that going on the offensive is a valid means of defeating terrorism. Both of these are things liberals regard provably false, yet they (you) have no better evidence to the contrary for the first, and none whatsoever for the second. Liberals (other than a few new-age spiritualists) are convinced they have ‘scientifically’ spiked the “god thing” beyond resurrecting and regard confronting bullies as insanity beyond discussing.

As to my second point on bias, by any honest headcount (and several have been made) the media is overwhelmingly in the liberal tank by a 4 to 1 margin. We can debate whether this is 3:1 or 5:1, but the fact will remain there is far more liberal bias than conservative bias in the media. A decade ago the numbers were even more overwhelmingly leftward, and it is only due to talk-radio in the mid-1980s and the internet in the 1990s that conservative voices have found media of our own. Prior to that, the media was almost entirely liberal, though it maintained better standards of reporting. I don’t know if you are old enough to remember, but there was a time when TV and radio set aside a few minutes at the end of each news program for station spokespersons to air views. This made clear what was opinion and what was fact (or pretty close). During the rest of the program, they kept the delivery sparse. A number of people complained delivery was too ‘dry’, so stations began spicing up the news with ‘human interests’, but also more hyperbole. That was an open invitation to compromise integrity. The Murrow-like stern/flat visage was next attacked as disinteresting, so the vacuous grin (whether reporting market shares or death & mayhem) became the new standard. It didn’t take long for hyperbole to become the norm in reporting and, as reporters are more often liberal, it was mostly liberal hype. Also, when I was a kid, parents and teachers taught us how to sift out bias for ourselves; something anyone born since the early 1970s pretty much has to learn on his/her own. We realized bias is inescapable, but also respected those reporters who keep it to a minimum. To be fair, platform size is not the same as reach, and conservative platforms have demonstrated they sometimes reach right past the liberal media stranglehold. This despite props and protections favoring the liberal-media (e.g., publicly funded liberal programming and ‘Fairness Doctrine’).

The problem is they [liberal media] are now regularly serving up radical talking points as though fact-based news to an audience mostly unaware of the distinction. I gave you the example of global-warming consensus earlier, which the media reports with a straight face knowing it to be logically inconsistent to have a scientific consensus before you have a science. Soon, people like you are uncritically repeating this rubbish as if you’d seen the evidence first hand; never quite realizing the IPCC committee and a ‘consensus researcher’ cum ideologue pulled a fast one on the media, who, in turn and despite realizing the fraud, passed it right on to you. That’s just one example, but this deception has been practiced so long it is mostly unconscious. The unsuspecting audience then carries said bias into the voting booth, jury box, workplace, social encounter, boardroom, and battlefield. A responsible and honest media would present fact as fact and opinion as opinion, leaving it to viewers to make up our own minds regarding the latter. That our media no longer does, speaks volumes regarding the low opinion they have of us.

Only socialism has achieved the degree of frightfulness with which you liberals conflate patriotism. The fascists (Italians and Spanish-nationalists), if not for their alliances with the Nazis probably would not have shed as much blood as they did (which was not greatly above the average for the period, as was the case for Germany and Russia). The two regimes best matching your depiction, then, were the Nazis and Soviets; both of whom enjoyed similar levels of patriotic fervor. On the other hand (and unlike Germany-Russia), Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodian communists lacked that kind of intense patriotism. In fact, those countries defy your requisite of fascist-patriotism because, in the period of greatest unrest and revolution (post-WWII), those lacked a similarly unified culture making them indifferent to nationalism. In fact, nationalism, in that quarter, was generally stigmatized as and equated with colonialism. China was the extreme case of mixed sub-cultures, each having its own language, customs, religions, and symbols and identity. The other two countries were similarly cobbled together. The only thing keeping China together in the mid-19th century was a common government, and even that warred against itself for supremacy. Modern China has since evolved a national identity complete with patriotism and values that has resulted in less strife overall because, whereas suppressing rivals was the focus early in the regime, satisfying citizen interests has become the greater focus today.

Soviet-Russia is responsible for more political death than Germany, and Chinese-communism killed more than Russia within comparable time frames:
Germany (1933-1945), 21-million killed or 1.75-million/yr
Russia (1917-1987), 62-million killed or 0.9-million/yr
China (1949-1987), 77-million killed or 2.0-million/yr
Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) 3-million or 0.75-million/yr
See: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM for details

Totalitarian regimes/cultures mostly kill their own people, whereas ‘democracies’ mostly kill outsiders. That would seem to argue democracies are deadlier to outsiders, but, in fact, are not because when we subtract out citizens killed by their own governments, totalitarians still rank highest.

Will you argue, then, it was patriotism rather than communism that caused all that death? Just for comparison, Rummel (a liberal) accuses the U.S. of 1.6-million democides (though he tends to favor non-U.S. ‘democracies’ over ours) in the period 1900-1987 or 0.018-million per year. Even allowing Rummel’s bias, totalitarian regimes still rank about 50-100 times deadlier than democratic republics. A similar comparison of autocratic governments (e.g., Indonesia, Sudan) ranks those 2-3 times deadlier than us. Mexico, in the same period, was 8.73 times deadlier than us. In fact, the gap between us and most others is nearly twice what Rummel argues, because he counts as ‘democide’ things we’ve done that he ignores in others and that are not ideological, not government policy, and not particularly cultural (to believe Rummel, then, you’d have to believe Americans exceptionally guilty of things like homicide, racial-violence, and non-genocidal massacres; things he leaves out in his estimates of others). Therefore (and this time with confirmation from a highly regarded liberal), it is not patriotism that is to blame but radical ideologies.

The modern-left never accuses itself of the ‘sin of patriotism’, and that includes soft-socialists. Yet, even the left makes a grab at the ‘patriotic’ label the moment it needs it. A key tenet of Marxism is that patriotism produces injustice. If ‘love of’ and ‘identification with’ country (aka, patriotism) are unjust, why would any self-respecting liberal-socialist tar himself with it? No, the claims of patriotism are dust thrown up by liberal-socialist politicians, pundits, and partisans to hide a more general distain of patria. They’d prefer ‘patriotism’ be so stigmatized they never again be held accountable for all the apologetics. Confess it, you’d much rather we abandoned patriotism and got on-board the one-big-happy-planet kumbaya bandwagon. We can read in your remarks the aversion you feel toward those of us who are unabashedly patriotic. You pepper every patriotic remonstration with slippery qualifiers that belie the utterance. Patriotism has become so strongly associated with ‘conservative’ in the liberal mind, you feel you must either one-up our claim to the greater patriotism or, failing that, degrade patriotism as dangerous jingoism. For nearly a century, liberals have vacillated between these two extremes so often and so comically it has become a standing joke. So, whenever liberals proclaim the greater patriotism, every sensible person (including fellow liberals) can’t help but giggle.

I, too, sometimes criticize my country. But, that is not the same as finding every fault in it. We find fault when there’s fault enough to warrant it; no more. Admittedly, our reaction may be to leap to the defense of patria when in the wrong, but isn’t that one of the measures of love? Have you never flown to the defense of your wife or child before realizing she just might be wrong? Was she a horrible person because she was wrong, or just having a bad day? So, why should country be any different from family? Liberals bend over backwards the other way, discounting patriotism wherever it intersects your multiculturalism; and feel you must do this every time the subject comes up. Conservatives more often assume innocence where country is concerned, whereas liberals have a reputation for assuming guilt. Real patriots don’t just love country when caught being unfaithful, and not just when it’s safe to say so. “My country, right or wrong” is not an expression of unthinking servility; but one of unflinching loyalty. Patriots stand up for country when in the right, but also by her when in the wrong because she is the land of our being and repository of our values. Liberals swear undying affection when safe to do so, but disassociate your selves the instant she’s ‘uppity’. So, yes, there is a qualitative difference between a conservative’s and a liberal’s patriotism. Maybe, not every liberal, but close enough I’d rather have conservatives defending her.

Liberals, understandably, get in a snit at being told ‘you aren’t patriotic’. Your most common reaction is to claim an equally valid patriotism and redefine things like heroism to drive your point home. I can’t tell you how lame it is hearing liberals go on and on about the ‘heroism’ of some anti-smoking tort-lawyer ‘fighting the good fight’ or the ‘heroism’ of community-workers and social-workers forced to rub elbows with bums and prostitutes or the ‘heroism’ of underpaid teachers who work long hours (hey, so do I!) or the ‘heroism’ of overbearing environmentalist busybodies. Liberals even have the audacity to label pet politicians as heroes. Just like those kings of old who cheapened their coinage, people who equate posturing with heroism debase the meaning of the term. I aspire to patriotism, but know I can’t prove it except through sacrifice. Unlike you liberals, I don’t compete for the title. I accept mine as the lesser kind that honors the real-deal. That is because, as with the true hero who sacrifices his utmost cherished possession on the altar of humanity, the true patriot sacrifices his on the altar of country. Our greatest patriots, then, are precisely our truest national heroes who give that last, unstinting measure of devotion. Anything less debases the meaning of the word. As I cherish the true patriot, I respect the honor that the term bestows, and refrain from making false claims to it. I settle for the lesser designation of conservative-libertarian.

Unlike liberals, we conservatives don’t need reminding to wave the flag. When was the last time you felt tears well up on hearing the anthem? Liberals are notorious for scorning the pledge and leaving the heart uncovered (or, as in one famous instance, of covering the wrong side); whereas conservatives are perfectly happy renewing our pledge each day. Our hearts swell proudly on seeing the flag wave or anthem sung. Worse, many liberals openly discourage patriotic display in others, just as you discourage public expressions of faith. When I traveled overseas and experienced how others live, I was made to appreciate just how blessed I am having been born here. Liberals do also, but then the oily caveats follow (e.g., “I love my country, ‘but’ …, but think there’s nothing special about us … but stop raping the planet … but it is unfair … but needs to be more sharing … but should be more like others, &c). Where I see the good America bestows on the rest of the world simply by existing as an extraordinarily free-society, the typical liberal feels compelled to list its faults as if that somehow makes it okay to microscopically take pride in country. The liberal-socialist apologist sees the glass 3/4 empty where the proud-American sees it 9/10 full.

We do get tired of those liberals who endlessly and shamelessly mock America, indifferent to how that feels to the rest of us. Among fellow conservatives, we indulge love of country because that is the only setting in which we can be sure of the shared sentiment; and only feel truly at home among those who share this love unguardedly. Can you really imagine we’d be fooled, then, into believing the half-hearted patriotism of a liberal insisting his is the real-deal even as he finds new objections to make? It may fool your liberal buddies, but, please! We accept some of you do love your country and willingly defend it (or some part of it), but, always, there are those tacky qualifiers you feel compelled to add on. So, it isn’t inconceivable some of us just might wish some of you (the ones who do spit on the flag) would just up and leave if they find us and our culture so heinous. What surprises us is that genuinely patriotic liberals (you?) don’t share our distaste for these fake patriots. Rather than call their bluff, you instead defend them and attack us. Understandably, that makes us doubly doubtful of liberal sincerity.

I know you don’t mean it like that, because I am surrounded by liberal family and friends who do it too; but, really, you should hear how noxious it sounds from where we sit. Imagine your kid sister (who was never disciplined as a child) is going around telling anyone who will listen that your dad ‘abused you’ when you know it was nothing more than tough-love from a parent scared you’d turn-out a hoodlum. You know kid-sister is just doing a ‘me-too’ cry for attention, and abuse stories are all the rage. Naturally, she gets huffy when you beg her to knock it off. Next thing you know that’s the word on street and there’s no putting a lid on it; and, predictably, little-sister is clueless how her neighbors ever got such an idea. You know perfectly well your sister loved dad too. But, try convincing the neighbors of it! That gives some rough idea how we conservatives view liberals bad-mouthing the country and culture while insisting they are doing no such thing. There’s just something pathetic about a liberal convinced he’s every bit as patriotic as the next guy, who, nonetheless, bad-mouths country in the very next breath.