"No liberty without virtue, no virtue without Christ", eh? Wow. Sounds voluntary to me. I find it very reassuring that I am not reliant on the whims of some all-powerful cosmic tyrant. I've read the Bible, and this god is not a very nice anthropomorphic hallucination: murder, war, rape, threats of eternal torment, and micro-management of trivial aspects of human behavior seem to be his modi operandi. I am relieved that I am not under its thumb, although it is still worrisome that so many imagine that they are, and act as if this control-freak puppetmaster were pulling their strings.

Right, it's certainly logical to argue that EVERY American has the right to keep and bear ANY armaments he wishes, including cruise missiles, land mines, and atomic bombs. Sounds logical to me. The quote itself has been taken completely out of context -- Dershowitz is a strong opponent of the 2nd Amendment and firearms ownership -- he calls it "an anachronistic drafting disaster that does not belong in any Constitution or Bill of Rights." However, he is opposed to repealing it because doing so would open the way for further revisions to the Bill of Rights and Constitution. That's what he meant by this quote.

That's a strawman -- who said anything about "local gentry?" My point is that slavery would not have died on its own without the 13th Amendment, IMO, because the South continued to hold blacks in defacto slavery (which is what sharecropping was) and segregate their schools, work environments, and even bathrooms for the next 100 years. You're absolutely right that the South was doing much better economically than the North, which is why Lincoln couldn't afford to allow the South to secede -- but don't you think slave labor had something to do with the South's economic success? I agree slavery was the excuse, not the primary motivation -- but to say slavery had "nothing to do with it" is disingenuous at best.

I'm always amazed at the "War of Northern Aggression" stuff spouted by southerners. Their central argument is usually that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free slaves within the Union -- but that was because Lincoln didn't have the authority to free Union slaves, and he knew it -- the only way to do that was with a Constitutional amendment, which happened in 1869. Lincoln was a politician, but he did oppose slavery: "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." That said, Mencken (who loved taking the least popular view) was wrong too -- the WHITE Confederates fought for the right to govern themselves, but if you weren't white, God help you. For 100 years after the Civil War, blacks were treated as 3rd-class citizens in the South, and nothing the southern apologists say can change that fact.

A very timely quote. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. "Thank God he was never elected president?" Look who we elected instead! McGovern -- heck, ANYBODY -- would have done better than Tricky Dick did in his second term!

Switzerland has not been invaded because it has maintained neutrality. Their militia has to be perpetuated because they have no standing army. Militia members are licensed and closely regulated. If you're not a militiaman or a cop, it's impossible to get a firearm license. There is practically zero gun violence there because there are practically zero guns in the hands of anyone outside of police and militia. I'm tired of gun people holding up Switzerland as a shining example of unrestricted gun possession, because it's simply not true. As for the quote, I have no problem with responsible gun possession, but who are we kidding that a citizen militia could take on today's US Army? That argument is completely obsolete.

As it turned out, that provision *should* have been added, since Congress has attempted (often successfully) to restrict all of those things except sleeping on one's left side -- and I have no doubt that will be proposed eventually.

This argument is incoherent. If you want to question defending Europe or Chinese/Japanese access to Gulf oil or "making Iraq safe for democracy", great -- that's one discussion. But deficit spending is a whole other (unrelated) issue, regardless of how we're using the money. And it's interesting which party does all the deficit spending: From 1776 to the present, we have accumulated $11 trillion in debt, and 85% of it piled up under only 3 presidents -- Reagan and the two Bushes. So where did this myth of Republican fiscal responsibility come from, I wonder?

"If I was [sic] a cynical man, I might think teachers were in the business for a paycheck." Good thing you're not cynical, then, Ken -- do you have any idea what teachers are paid? Do you really believe they chose teaching over the business world for the pathetic salary they receive? BTW, the proper phrase is "if I WERE a cynical man." And Robert, it's a MOOT point. It appears that some of us should have paid closer attention in class when we had the opportunity. As for Shanker's quote, it's a stupid thing to say, and I HOPE he was being cynical.

Does no one remember that Huxley was talking about US, about what we were becoming, not some distant totalitarian state?

Gimme a break, Warren. McCarthy never found a single communist. Not one.

"The State Department has now declared the Christian New Testament to be Hate literature." Wow! Prove that, please. As a matter of fact, prove ANY of the allegations you make in your long, scary antisemitic diatribe, Mr. Rogers.

Warren, where legalization has failed (most famously in England), it was not because they botched the implementation, but because it was a bad idea. You want a disaster? Our approach (criminalization) has been a complete disaster. It's time to try something else.

During that era, Russia & China also "banned" homosexuality. You can't legislate behavior.

Well, Archer & I finally agree on something. As a physician, I can tell you that legalization is something we should all advocate. We would not control drug addiction this way but we would eliminate most of the criminal activity that surrounds it. Drug addiction is an unsolved problem. No matter how you approach it, once a person becomes addicted, they tend to go back to their drug of choice. This is one issue on which I am in complete agreement with my Libertarian friends. Legalizing it gets rid of a huge and violent criminal empire just as it did with alcohol. Neither drug addiction nor alcoholism are reasonable behaviors, but as my grandmother used to say about liquor when I was a kid, "You can't legislate behavior." And that is that.

Fun fact, okay? Since 1776, the United States has accumulated a national debt of almost $11 trillion, over half of which was incurred when a Bush was on watch! What a family legacy! If you throw in Reagan, fully 70% of the national debt was created under just 3 Republican presidents. What's more, they didn't even TRY to restrain spending -- out of 19 submitted budgets (so far), only TWO were balanced. So here's my question: Where did the myth of Republican Fiscal Responsibility come from?

Still fewer understand that it was DESIGNED that way, so that Congress (and indirectly, the lobbyists) could not manipulate it to their own selfish ends.

This is a flat-out lie. The IRS, as my accountant says, is the closest thing the US has to the Gestapo -- guilty until proven innocent, and all that. Oh, and by the way, failure to file a tax return when you have reportable income is a violation of the law all by itself.

It is indeed a stupid remark, because (1) payment is not voluntary, and (2) each payer is funding current retirees, not saving for his/her own retirement. SS was designed that way from the very beginning because setting it up as a trust fund would have been prohibitively expensive.

Sure, let's go back to living on the edge of financial ruin, as we were before the Fed was created. The system was set up as an independent entity within the government so that special interests in Congress or the presidency would not abuse the power to create money or abuse government regulations over banks. We've given the Fed haters ample opportunity to vent -- can't we please move on?

Astonishing how well H.L. describes our current administration.

I wish someone had reminded Bush & Cheney of that a few years ago.

Holy cow -- xenophobia does rule, doesn't it?

Another case of context deficiency. Think about when this was written, folks -- after the War to End All Wars, a worldwide Depression imminent -- the feeling of many was that the countries of the world had to get together and get along if they were to prevent a second World War -- and obviously they failed. As a result, xenophobia still rules, as one can see above. Those of you who are so afraid of the rest of the world need to do some traveling. How about this quote, Mr./Ms. Editor? "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." ~Mark Twain

So the mud brick maker is "not your equal", eh? Then I guess you realized how that sounded, and added that he's "not lesser" than you. Which is true, in many ways he's greater. It's that kind of xenophobia (along with our recent penchant for invading sovereign nations without provocation) that has fostered so much anti-Americanism around the world.