The short answer is self-defense, and the need to know if persuasion can work. It's all I have to work with.

You talk like my ideas are something I found under a cabbage leaf, an irrational personal opinion like an overwhelming fear of brussels sprouts.

This is a bit unfair. I've studied this subject for around thirty years. My ideas are not random neural firings out of my own head, but from the minds and writings of people over the past 200 years and more that are smarter than both of us put together. That I'm one of very few people here that supports these ideas doesn't mean I'm the only one out there.

You know quite well I don't use "wacko" sources. Of all the people here, I'm probably better than anyone at covering my facts.

I spent an entire thread trying to convince some people that a trillion is larger than a hundred billion. Where else do I go from there? Is the comparison of two numbers like that a matter of "faith?"

It's kind of depressing that you put ideas like individual rights on the same level with a belief in leprechauns.