Oh, you're in fine form, SDAITech1. Touching the faith that you RightWingers put in utopian linear extrapolation....tomorrow will always be like today, only more so.

I've predicted a reversal of fortunes for the Right because I bet on change, and that's always the safe bet in the long run. The world does change, no matter how much change terrifies conservatives.

In particular, I understand that there are always backlashes in a free society, and that the only way for the Right to hold on to its shaky monopoly on power is to install an authoritarian regime that will suppress change through force. And history tells us that that can work for only so long before there's a revolution.

I see how complacency and smugness are integral to the conservative mindset, and how that always sets you up for a fall. You start to exhibit this smug assurance that the outcome of the last election means the world's your oyster from now until the end of time...an insanity that doesn't survive more than a handful of election cycles.

The Right's only managed to achieve the power it has by putting together a coalition of strange bedfellows with naturally antagonistic viewpoints. Much like the Democrats starting in the 70s, and history shows how well that worked in the long run. The Red "values" voters, tending to occupy lower socioeconomic strata, won't be fooled forever into believing that their interests have anything at all in common with the interests of the moneyed elite. The Right's power base is a shaky house of cards.

Conservatives have "a lock on public opinion"? Oh, god, gag me! The Democrats ran the worst Presidential candidate they have in decades, and a crucial percentage point of the electorate chose Bush as the lesser evil. You call that a lock? Take another pill, Techie!

And then there's your narrow focus on the US and Europe, as if that's the entire world. But you've only accounted for about a billion people. You think the other 5.5 billion are going to roll over and play dead in the face of a RightWing hegemony? Not hardly, man. Especially not when the RightWing philosophy celebrates economic exploitation of the other 5.5 billion, of the kind that rubs so many people the wrong way (e.g., bin Laden's manifesto). That's a formula for more grief in the world, and certainly not for the idyllic RightWing utopia for which you yearn. Exploitation, and the side-effects like global warming and resource depletion, will be the crucial and fundamental issues that really characterize the 21st Century...and the Right is on the wrong side of those issues.

But you'll argue and disagree heatedly, and that's a good thing. It tells me that you remain on-course for the hard fall that's coming, that your sneering complacency will in fact contribute to that fall. Change is coming--bet on it.

Thanks for the reassurance, SDAITech1!