John Hawkins has an interview with Scott Walker.

Here.

Some of the interview recounts the story covered in Walker's book ("Unintimidated"), and there's  substance on immigration and health care, but let me highlight the most abstract and forward-looking part, summarizing "the message that we’ve got to get out to people":

... that the Left, they want you under their thumb.  They want to control you.  They want to control your lives.  They want you to be dependent on the government.  We should say we’re the ones, not only for the poor, but for young people coming out of college, for working class families, for immigrants, for others out there.  We should say we are the ones who empower the American Dream.

We’re the ones who say you can do and be anything you want, but it’s because we empower you with the ability and the platform to do that.  Then it’s up to you to make that happen.  The other side tells you they want to help you, but in the end they want to keep you limited in how far you can grow.

We want to make sure everyone’s a part of the recovery.  We’re not going to leave anybody behind, but we’re going to do it by empowering people to control their own lives and destiny.

That's a nice combination of staunch conservatism with empathy and caring, which is, I think, what the GOP should want in its next presidential candidate. Walker has absorbed and processed the "income inequality" theme that the Democratic Party has chosen to push.

Walker goes on — prompted by a question — to analyze why Mitt Romney lost in 2012. Romney's people "mis-served" him by misremembering how Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980. Reagan did not focus solely on the bad economy. He was, in fact, "much more aspirational," and he stood for a coherent set of principles — "limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense" — that appeared clear to Walker when, as a teenager, he voted for Reagan and that is still memorable today. It was a whole package, you understood what it meant and "You knew... a Reagan presidency was going to be better for you."

74 conservative bloggers answer the question "Which of the following candidates would you most prefer to see as the GOP’s 2016 candidate?

There were 19 names to choose from, and Marco Rubio got a clear plurality, which was not surprising. What was surprising was Rand Paul at #2 and Scott Walker at #3. Have people heard that Scott Walker does not have a college degree? Could that possibly work? (I know I was disparaging college in another post this morning.)

Chris Christie is down at #10, with only 2 votes — including mine — and he's #1 on the list of who would you least like.

In 2008, the least wanted candidates for bloggers were…John McCain and Ron Paul.

In 2012, the least wanted candidates for bloggers were…Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

So, going by those results, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush would have to be considered the early favorites for 2016 based on the fact that conservative bloggers don’t want either of them as a nominee.

"30 Best Quotes" from the GOP convention.

As seen by John Hawkins, with #1, #5, and #14 coming from Mike Huckabee. Was Huckabee that good? Here's the #1 quote:

“The Democrats say we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying. That sounds like the nonsense of giving every kid a trophy for showing up. Friends, we’re talking about leading the country, not playing on a third-grade soccer team! I realize this is the man who got a Nobel Peace Prize for what he would potentially do, but in the real world, you get the prize for producing something, not just promising it.”

I don't think the Democrats are saying "we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying," and the everybody-gets-a-trophy trope is hackneyed. It was a reasonably spiffy quote though, like something Rush Limbaugh would say ad libbing on his show in any given hour.

By the way, speaking of what Democrats say, I can easily picture Democrats calling that quote racist. Why? For comparing Obama to children. Why doesn't somebody review each speech with an eye toward eliminating things like that? The Democrats in my head — whom I can hear giving their spin on any and everything — are saying: Because they really do want to reach white people in that residual racist part of their brain.

"Mitt Romney FINALLY appears to have become the consensus nominee in the blogosphere."

Email from John Hawkins, who posts his survey results here. It's not that clear-cut for Mitt. In particular:

Which of the following candidates would you prefer as the GOP’s nominee?

Mitt Romney: 47.1% (32 votes)

An as of yet unknown candidate selected at a brokered convention: 52.9% (36 votes)

Oh, right-wing bloggers! Why do you hate reality?

"The 50 Best Political Quotes For 2011."

According to Right Wing News. Hey, #47 is from me.

78 right-of-center bloggers respond to a poll about the 2012 Republican candidates.

At Right Wing News. I'm one of the respondents, by the way, and I don't usually answer RWN polls, mainly because I don't have answers to the questions John Hawkins tends to ask. Let me highlight the Gingrichy results:

If you had to pick a 2012 GOP contender today, which of the following candidates would you select?... 1) Newt Gingrich: 39.2% (31 votes)

Romney came in third, with 10 votes. Rick Perry got in at second place with 21.

Do you consider Newt Gingrich to be a conservative?

Yes: 63.6% (49 votes)
No: 36.4% (28 votes)...

Do you consider Mitt Romney to be a conservative?

Yes: 33.3% (26 votes)
No: 66.7% (52 votes)

If you had to choose between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, which candidate would you select?

Mitt Romney: 26.3% (20 votes)
Newt Gingrich: 73.7% (56 votes)

Which candidate do you think would be more likely to beat Barack Obama in 2012?

Mitt Romney: 42.3% (33 votes)
Newt Gingrich: 57.7% (45 votes)

So there you have it. The right-of-center bloggers are gaga for Gingrich.

The plight of the independent — right wing? — blogger.

Right Wing News has a piece called "The Slow, Painful Coming Death Of The Independent, Conservative Blogosphere," and the part that jumped out at me isn't about where one is on the political spectrum:

Most bloggers are not very good at marketing, not very good at monetizing, there are no sugar daddies giving us cash, and this isn’t the biggest market in the world to begin with. In other words, this is a time-consuming enterprise, but few people are going to make enough money to go full time. How many people can put in 20-30-40-50 hours a week on something that’s not going to ever be their full time job? Can they do it for 5 years? 10 years? 15? 20?

Actually, there are a lot of people who do that: artists, retired folk, stay-at-home spouses, people who already have enough money, the disabled, and the hardcore believer. You know when you are writing for the intrinsic value of writing (and reaching readers) and when you are writing for money (or some combination of the 2). The thought that you are "put[ting] in 20-30-40-50 hours a week" nags in the head of a person who is doing it for money.

"We're getting very close to the point where we could have states default on their debts for the first time."

"What should happen then?" Right Wing News asks Thomas Sowell, who answers: "They should go bankrupt. I'm looking forward to it."

So who did the conservative bloggers decide were the most annoying left-wing and the most annoying right-wing bloggers?

From The 8th Annual Right Wing News Conservative Blog Awards:

Most Annoying Left-Of-Center Blogger

3) Matt Yglesias (6)
3) Kos/Daily Kos (6)
2) Charles Johnson (10)
1) Andrew Sullivan (11)

Most Annoying Right-Of-Center Blogger

4) Allah (4)
2) Dan Riehl (5)
2) Debbie Schlussel (5)
1) David Frum (8)

More awards at the link, of course. I'm just a particular fan of the concept of annoyingness.

Justice Stephen Breyer on "Fox News Sunday."

Watch here. Chris Wallace does a great job of needling him about things Breyer's written about constitutional interpretation and, Breyer, as I'd expect, rises to the occasion. Breyer literally waves the Constitution around, in tiny booklet form, and figuratively waves around a bigger book, his book "Making Our Democracy Work."

Now, let's rummage through the transcript. Chris Wallace questions him about "just applying the law as written," and Breyer plugs in the expected elementary lesson about the concision of the phrases in the Constitution and the need to apply them in the changed circumstances of the modern world (airplanes! the internet!), and then Wallace displays the text of the 2d Amendment:

WALLACE: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms" -- the right of the people to keep and bear arms -- "shall not be infringed." Now, Justice, I understand why, as a matter of policy, in a world with a lot of urban violence and big cities, that some people would say we need gun control, particularly in a big city like Washington, as they have here, and in Chicago. You ruled in both of those cases. And in both cases the court voted twice over your dissent that the founders meant what they said, people have a right to bear arms.

Breyer, of course, is ready for this:

BREYER: Yes. Yes. That's a wonderful example because, of course, it's not a matter of policy. It is a matter of what those framers intended. And you saw that first phrase, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  What does that mean, the militia? Historians told us, and the dissenters thought they were right, that what that meant was that James Madison, thinking, "I've got to get this document ratified," was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. "That can't happen," said Madison. And therefore, he wrote the Second Amendment to prove it. Now, if that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right.

There's some talk about judges acting like judges and how history can't answer some of the details. How do the old words and the old intent apply to new things? Breyer lists machine guns and torpedoes, and then, deviously, handguns. Wallace responds:

WALLACE: I understand. But it certainly didn't provide for a ban, at least that's what the court's decision was, your court's -- it didn't provide for a ban on all handguns as they have here in Washington, D.C.

BREYER: Are you a sportsman? Do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland. There is no problem, I don't think, for anyone who really wants to have...

WALLACE: But -- but it's...

BREYER: ... a gun.

WALLACE: ... but that's a policy issue. That's not a constitutional issue.

Breyer chooses not to jump on this point, perhaps because he'd have to say things that conservatives say. He'd have to promote federalism. Let me sketch it out.

If there isn't a right covering this particular subject, then state and local government will be able to legislate the policies that they, as a community, think are best. Yes, it's a policy issue, and — Breyer would say, if he'd gone on — that's why it's appropriate for legislative bodies to make decisions about it. If you don't like those decisions, the great thing about the United States is that you can move around and go to places that have policy preferences that suit your tastes. You have a right to travel and a right to change your residence to another state. And you also have the right to participate in politics, so there's also the alternative of trying to get the law in your state or city changed, so that handguns are not banned. Breyer's approach to the Second Amendment lets the people make the gun control laws what they want them to be and, when they do, they won't get caught up in litigation over the choices they make.

This is what conservatives say all the time about abortion and the separation of church and state (to cite the 2 most glaring examples). But here's Right Wing News — Chris Wysocki — excoriating Breyer for saying "get on the subway and go to Maryland."

Mind-boggling really, isn't it? Gee little black girl, do you want to go to the same school as white girls? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland!

Well, no. There is a federal constitutional right covering that point, so you don't get the state-to-state variation. And that's the question: Is it a federal constitutional right or not? When you're arguing that there isn't a right, you're saying the law can vary from state to state. When is that intolerable and when isn't it? We all agree (now) to the uniform resolution of the school segregation problem that excluded decentralized decisionmaking. There is an Equal Protection right.

But there was, recently, a disagreement about the Second Amendment, and Breyer was on the side that thought there was no individual right. Put another way, Breyer's side of the Court thought that decentralized policymaking could govern. Do you think that's terrible? If you believe that there's a right, then, yes, of course, you do. But think of something else, where you think the Court is wrong about saying there's a right — perhaps, for you, abortion — and then, don't you remember all the times you made the argument that it wouldn't be so terrible because individual states could make their own decisions and people could move (or travel) to the states that gave them what they wanted?


Wysocki continues:

So mister, what if you are in a wheelchair? This doctor's office has stairs. If you want to see an accessible doctor, get on the subway and go to Maryland!

Whoa! You think the Constitution obliges private citizens, like doctors, to make their buildings wheelchair accessible?! That's so left-wing! Check your blog's name! What's the "Right Wing News" today, that righties have gone all lefty? That would be news!

***

(I have some more things to say about the Breyer interview, but I'll start a new post for that.)

CORRECTION: Sorry, I had "Chris Matthews" in the first sentence of this post. It's Chris Wallace.

That "20 Worst Americans of all time" list compiled by Right Wing News by surveying conservative bloggers.

It's a ridiculous list, as lawprof Stephen Bainbridge points out:

Personally, I find the collated list pretty much of a joke. It reflects the partisan passions of the moment, not anything resembling a serious verdict of history.

But it was predictable that the list would be ridiculous, because of the methodology:

All [43] bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-20 selections. Rank was determined simply by the number of votes received. 

So, if everyone put Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama on the list, he'd come out as the worst person in American history. (The expression "of all time" highlights the silliness of the list. When in history do we start having "Americans"? 1776... 1787... or thereabouts. There were no terrible Americans in the Middle Ages or ancient times. Saying "of all time" makes you sound like a bombastic know-nothing. (It's an expression we've been using jocosely, chez Meadhouse, ever since this happened.)

In fact, only 25 of the 43 put Jimmy Carter on their list, and that was enough to put him at #1. Obama was second with only 23 selections. They're easy to think of, so they got on a lot of lists. (Surprisingly few, actually.) More obscure but more evil Americans were less likely to come to mind, but would probably have raked in votes if the surveyed bloggers had been given a list to chose from.

So, tweak the methodology. Have 2 stages where you first take suggestions for who should be on a list, then have the voters pick however many they want from the list. If I have to pick 20, I may need to pad it out with individuals who aren't really that bad. Or give everyone 20 votes and let them pile the votes on their choices in whatever proportion they want. You could dump 15 votes on Obama and 5 on Carter, for example.

By the way, oddly enough, my name appears in the first comment over there at Right Wing News:

What an [sic] spectacularly ignorant list. I'm a progressive, and I could do a better job of being a right-wing butthole than the people who voted.....

Michael Moore over Upton Sinclair or Lincoln Steffens? Jane Fonda over Paul Robeson? Not one member of the Warren Court? Not Theodore Roosevelt? Where's Daniel Ellsberg or Seymour Hirsch-- or Julian Assange?

This is why we make fun of your lack of intellect, folks-- you can't even identify the people who've done the most damage to your belief system. It would be as if progressives compiled a list of the most vile and bigoted conservatives in history and picked Wally George, John Schmitz, Ann Althouse and Orly Taitz.

... whoever they are.

If you click over to Bainbridge, you'll see his comments on each of the individuals on the RWN list. Bainbridge also makes his own "Worst Americans" list, with a decided emphasis on traitors. He puts Aldrich Ames and Benedict Arnold at #1 and #2.

Now, for some reason he puts Paris Hilton at #11. Huh? I guess he thought there had to be a female on the list and that was the best he could do. He called her the "personification of the celebrity obsessed culture." Isn't the obsession with celebrities the fault of the people doing the obsessing? (Let's take responsibility for our own faults. It's the conservative way, I've heard.)

In an update, he defends his #11 selection of Hilton "as one of the earliest examples of how it is now possible in our culture to be famous merely for being famous without having any significant merit or worth."

Earliest examples? Earliest examples??!!! If Paris Hilton seems like an early example, you might not know so much about history.  The definition of "celebrity" as someone who is "known for his well-knownness" appears in a book that came out in 1962 — "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America" by Daniel J. Boorstin.

Can we think of some earlier examples of famous-for-being-famous Americans? Who was Boorstin writing about in 1962? We had empty celebrities then, for sure. Somebody motivated Andy Warhol to say "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Or is that why we can't remember the empty celebrities of the past? Their fame-time ran out, and we forgot.

And how about giving Paris Hilton credit as an entrepreneur? You try creating a compelling character out of yourself and making money out of that product? The fact is, she's a model and an actress, and the way she annoys people like Bainbridge and seems dumb and pointless is part of the fabulous image-product that has sold so well.

"Why I Denied David Frum’s Website A Spot In The Blogads Conservative Hive."

John Hawkins explains:

Now, as a general rule, I try to be very open minded about who gets into the Blogads Conservative Hive. If they're generally friendly to conservatives and seem to have a mostly conservative audience, I don't mind having them on board. So, aside from conservative blogs, there are Libertarian blogs in the Hive and there are blogs I'd call center-right. It goes without saying that there are plenty of issues where members of the Hive, myself included, don't see eye-to-eye.

I'm in the Blogads Conservative Hive, so I can vouch for that!

Guys like Frum want to have it both ways. Being a "Republican" / "conservative" who tells liberals what they want to hear about the Right is a career niche —and it can pay big dividends....

[W]hy is David Frum getting a column at CNN? How is it that Time has a guy like this writing for them? What's the purpose of putting a guy like Frum on TV as opposed to all the genuine conservatives who dwarf his traffic and can obviously draw a bigger crowd?...

[T]he mainstream media loves "conservatives" and "Republicans" who will trash whomever the Left hates most. So, if you're willing to talk about how Sarah Palin is a hick, Glenn Beck is a crank, Rush Limbaugh is bad for the country, and the Tea Party is bad for democracy, the mainstream media will reward you and because conservatives pride themselves on being open minded, they'll all too often give you a pass for your atrocious behavior — especially since the MSM doesn't insist you play their game all the time. As long as you're willing to say what they want about the people they hate the most, they'll reward you with a cover story at Newsweek and then in your off time, you can churn out a few articles to point gullible conservatives towards while you're trying to guilt them into taking you seriously by crying "epistemic closure!"

I Googled "epistemic closure" and got, first, "'Epistemic Closure'? Those Are Fighting Words," a NYT article featuring a photo of Frum. So what's that fight all about?

The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history....

([Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute] said he probably fished “epistemic closure” out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy, where it has a technical meaning in the realm of logic.)

Blech. What an ugly phrase and what a pointless and irritating explanation for it. It's pretentious, but the usage is actually inaccurate. How off-putting and unhelpful!

Back to Hawkins:

Long story short, everybody has to make a living. But, I'm not interested in helping people like Frum play this little game where they try to cripple conservatives publicly while coming around on the back end to milk us for money. If Frum wants to be a dancing monkey for the Left, let them come up with the money to pay for the tune.

ADDED: "NOTE TO DAVID FRUM: Google doesn’t own BlogAds." Ha. Frum had written: "Hawkins is the person entrusted by Google to determine who may join the conservative blogads cloud." You'd think Frum would figure out the basics of blog advertising before attacking Hawkins. BlogAds is its own company, and Hawkins took the initiative to set up a "hive" that he called "Conservative" to attract buyers.

"[C]oncern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa."

"To the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis -- will it work? Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective alternate means."

From a list of Saul Alinsky quotes selected by Right Wing News.

I also liked this story:

The difference between fact and history was brought home when I was a visiting professor at a certain Eastern university. Two candidates there were taking their written examinations for the doctorate in community organization and criminology. I persuaded the president of this college to get me a copy of this examination and when I answered the questions the departmental head graded my paper, knowing only that I was an anonymous friend of the president. Three of the questions were on the philosophy of Saul Alinksy. I answered two of them incorrectly. I did not know what my philosophy or motivations were; but they did!

I wonder if that is as severe of a criticism of the teachers as he seemed to think. The teachers haed learned and taught Alinsky's philosophy based on what he put in writing, but he had access to his own brain, which was continually creating new material and choosing, when writing, what to include and how to frame things.

Note how he shifted from the phrase "the philosophy of Saul Alinksy" (the subject of the questions) to the "philosophy or motivations" of Saul Alinsky. He had unique access to knowledge of his motivations, and I wonder how honest he was with himself or in his written answer to the questions about what his motivations were (if that's what a question called for). The teachers might have wanted some critical thinking about Alinsky, while he may have flattered himself.

The author is not the best judge of what is contained in his own books, because it is confused with all the other things he thinks and the things he meant to say but didn't or wishes he had (or hadn't) said.

On the other hand, there's Woody Allen's great fantasy of producing the author to refute some jackass's assertion about what is in a book:

John Yoo gets a sympathetic ear...

... from Right Wing News.

It's the Bloggingheads Nobel Prizapalooza.

Ha ha ha ha. And you thought I had done enough with my all-Nobel-Prize-all-the-time blog theme of the day.



Enjoy!!!!

"Obscene, but absolutely hilarious."

According to Right Wing News.

Okay, now I know what's right-wing hilarious. And I'm a little scared.

Especially the part that got me thinking about egg salad.

IN THE COMMENTS: The wonderful Bissage:

I can’t watch the video right now. I’m probably not the only one, so let’s see if something else might suffice:

Bill Bennett walks into an upscale D.C. nightspot and is surprised to see Pat Buchanan sitting at the bar eating an entire chicken. He watches in amazement as Mr. Buchanan tears into the hapless bird and doesn’t stop until all that remains is one chicken wing.

Mr. Bennett says, “You know, Pat, I can’t help but notice you ate that entire bird except for the right wing.”

Mr. Buchanan wipes the slobber and chicken bits from his face and says, “Well, there’s a reason for that but it has nothing to do with my right-wing political inclinations.”

And with that, the ghost of William F. Buckley appears out of thin air and kicks them both in the balls. They double over in agony and fall to the floor. Mr. Buckley sits down at the bar and orders an egg salad sandwich.

The End.

Right and left: my sad experience

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a political moderate. More than any ideology, I care about rational discourse. In the year that I've been blogging I've taken a lot of different positions, some left and some right. What I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times you've written posts that take their side. Why is this happening? I find it terribly, terribly sad.

UPDATE: My colleague Nina, a self-confessed "lefty," writes that she has been slammed from the right. And I'm reminded that I should say, I don't think all the irrational blogging is on the left. I'm just saying that I'm struck by the way the right perceives me as a potential ally and uses positive reinforcement and the left doesn't see me as anything but an opponent -- doesn't even try to engage me with reasoned argument. Maybe the left feels beleaguered these days, but how do they expect to make any progress if they don't see the ways they can include the people in the middle? If you look around and only see opponents and curl up with your little group of insiders, you are putting your efforts into insuring that you remain a political minority. I also want to add that the many lefties I live and work around in Madison are perfectly friendly to me. I get email saying, it must be terrible for you there, you must be the target of so much hostility. I always write back and say it's not like that at all.

But do read Nina's whole post. She goes on to agree with me about the problems of blogging in general. Here's an excerpt:

I, too, am saddened by so much of what I read in blogs, and comment threads are even worse. It's as if writers are grabbing the mike and running to the stage without having once practiced the song they are about to force onto the audience. At first it seems funny and then it just seems sad, desperate, irresponsible.

The blog is a stage and unfortunately anyone can grab the mike. And I admit, sometimes, in fascination, I log on and listen, mesmerized by the lack of restraint, a demonic pleasure derived from seeing someone so exposed, so childishly out of control. But the experience always leaves me feeling empty. Writing and ranting that is neither clever nor funny hardly qualifies as banter. And most often, it pushes the boundaries of meanness.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Poliblog weighs in on the subject. And here are two different emailers who say something very similar (and quite provocative):

As someone who made the move from liberal to conservative in his mid to late twenties, what I found is that conservatives were much more tolerant of me as a liberal, than liberals are now tolerant of me as a conservative. I'm speaking as a whole not to a person. Conservatives always wanted to reason with me, talk me out of it. Liberals question my intentions and decency. Out here in Hollywood when I would come out of the conservative closet, liberals were shocked because "I'm such a sweet guy" they had no idea. Those people remain nice to me but something changes. It's like having sex with a friend. You can't go back. And it's all awkward now. A shame really. Never had that problem with conservatives. And it's not that liberals are beleaguered. This was happening before the Republican take-over in 94.

[DIFFERENT EMAILER] I think that certain there is a certain type of "leftishness" that predicates its view of the world on some special insight into reality which one can only share or not. I think, for example, this was the principle informing such sixties talk as "raising one's consciousness," or such notions that one is "good" by virtue of mere sincerity or proper beliefs, regardless of one's actions. If one shares the insight or subscribes to it, one is part of the virtuous elect; if not, one is evil. Civil discourse by contrast, presupposes that one can communicate, persuade, and, importantly,be persuaded, which in turn requires at least some degree of modesty in insisting that one is right, that there is a possibility that one is wrong. This of course can appear on the right, but does not do so as much because, I believe, the presuppositions of civil discourse accord more closely with "rightish" values.

I have noticed that a good portion of people on the left proceed on the theory that they are the good people. Of course, there's a segment on the right that does that too. I have a big problem with all of them. Even if you are the good people, the policies you propose might still be bad. But politics should be about communication and convincing people with the quality of your ideas, not claiming to be a good person and demanding that others join you or they are not good. I steer clear of cultish people like that!

YET MORE: A reader emails: "I've heard it said that the Right is looking for converts and the Left is looking for heretics." Actually, it's probably more fun to be a heretic ... in a free country, at least.

AND MORE: Right Wing News weighs in here.

EVEN MORE: Baseball Crank responds. Here's a key insight:

I think a lot of liberals, particularly the more vocal ones on the internet who grew up in blue-state cities and went to blue-state colleges and got into blue-state occupations like the law or academia, just don't have the same formative experience of having had to reconcile themselves to political disagreements with people they otherwise like or respect, and it shows.

AND YET STILL EVEN MORE: Sissy Willis responds. She thinks there is something inherent in left and right positions that produces this different behavior. I am trying to reach out to the left and say: Behave better! Engage me! But I read her as telling me that's hopeless.