You sound JUST like SDAI...........you even write like him.

However, your paragraphs are not the Final Truth, or the Final Solution.
It is just an opinion FROM the right ABOUT the left.

Our voices haven't been silenced, but they are IN DANGER of being silenced and we know it.
ANYONE who spoke up during the the September 2001 plans to go to "WAR" with Afganistan and the Taliban and any other nation were quickly silenced and made to feel traitorous to even OBJECT.
"You're either with us or against us".
Lists were drawn up, newspapers and colleges were put on alert. Editors and writers were FIRED.
So, it doesn't take a brain surgeon or a physicist to figure out that if Bush goes to "WAR" with Iraq, Korea, or any other nation he deems "hostile", that ALL dissenting voices will be seen as unpatriotic.
We wish to put the cart before the horse here. Just protecting our already dwindling rights.

Bush has even had the arrogance to decry that the use of nuclear weapons is permissible, that nations like China and Russia no longer pose us a threat (like they're in our back pocket), and that he cares not a whit for ANY treaty and will do as he likes.
Duh....no WONDER everyone's objecting!

>"The pity is that so many of them are smart, ethical, outstanding people, and their failure is diminishing the vigor of a remarkable and worthwhile national debate."

Pure bullshit.
First, it's not a "pity". It's our right.
We are not "failing", we are growing.
We are not "diminishing the vigor" of a national debate, but ADDING to it it.
That remark smarts of SDAI-ism.