After I posted, I got to thinking about the nature of my response. What you see as an attempt to "deflect attention" is really a reflection of the fact that, more and more, I find myself more interested in how politics works than in arguing any particular ideological side. My post was consistent with the major themes I've been thinking about the last year, including the deconstruction of politics into psychology and ideology, and the use of propaganda.

I really don't give a rat's ass about Victor Davis Hanson's beliefs. After all these years of listening to RightWing rhetoric, I have it memorized, and I know that it's in the very nature of Conservatives that they will not come up with anything new.

Given the adamantine stubbornness of Conservatives, no real discussion is possible. So, I could either give up talking to you, or I could focus on the process and techniques and psychology of politics, and, I believe, find new understandings and insights that I would never discover locked into endless fruitless argument. Despite your boundless paranoia that I'm simply looking for a new weapon with which to attack you, in fact I really am curious to understand "the mind of the Conservative".

This is where I'm going, Tom. You can come along if you want, or you could just keep on repeating the same handful of static ideological mantras, over and over and over, ad nauseum. Frankly, that's getting so boring I could scream.

(Mea culpa: 'But at least it was "fair and balanced"' was hardly a scholarly essay. Another approach to keeping it interesting for me is to play with satire and sarcasm, to wring a few yucks from a subject that otherwise has become remorselessly grim. Politics needs comic relief, now more than ever.)