"I'm sorry I jumped all over GBAIKE, he really can't help himself, but it was obvious he was immune to irony so I thought I could bore him away with a tedious philosophical rant. Instead, it just put more blood in the water."

I didn't think the first paragraph was tedious philosophical rant, but I concur about the couple paragraphs that followed the first- it didn't make a lick of sense to me.

As for the first paragraph I thought you brought up a interesting point- though I disagreed with your conclusion:
"...that no one has consistent ideas on every issue, and that there is no single ideology or philosophy that can be used to organize anyone's opinions."

In general, I do agree that arguing political ideology can be about as productive [or destructive] as arguing theology [btw, I wouldn't quibble with the claim that political ideology is a form of theology- and thereby I'm guilty of tautology].

But as I said previously, I deleted what I wrote, and there is little justification to recalled it. Though one thing I did write was something along the line, that politician is to philosopher as salesman is to artist. Not that it was important, and particularly when out of context.

And as to the subject of irony. There is perhaps some irony in having laws preventing monopolies, and a government seemingly striving make monopolies [the subject of my first post]. And related: socialists *forgetting*, "When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use". And lastly, for someone such as myself who *HATES* socialism, to suggest *anything* that might even in some way be useful for socialists [who *seem* to be trying {and have a very successful history of doing so} to murder millions and bring endless misery upon this world].