tb, no matter how many times you said it, it's still wrong.

and when have you conceded any regulation is preferable to none? if you don't like "our" position it's because you refuse to consider anyone but yours. the amount or lack of governmental controls is certainly something which should be debated, but you are opposed to it in principle, and like all demagogues, you attack any disagreement as if it represented the most extremist and exaggerated position of your opponents. just because we don't accept your superstition doesn't mean we automatically favor the exact opposite in extremis. that's a cheap rhetorical trick you love to use that gives you away every time.

if you don't see posts here attacking extremist leftist's positions it is because most posts are responses to yours, you're the one who refuses to let this topic go, who insists on bringing it up constantly, who jumps on even the most casual and oblique reference to it, whether or not we answer at all. you're the one who has made it his personal crusade then gets into a snit because everyone doesn't fall into line and nod reverently in agreement.

forgive us if if we feel you are promoting a self-serving agenda, but your rhetoric and your methods make it difficult to believe you just come here to chat. it is not up to us to provide counterexamples to our position when we are responding to one-sided attacks on ours. you see, tb, just because we can see you're full of crap doesn't necessarily mean we reject your arguments completely, as you continue to imply we do.

as for the banana republic metaphor, the one i was thinking of in particular was 18th century virginia, because that seems to be your model of the ideal society: a country stolen from the indians, developed by indentured servants, worked by slaves, and owned by an rich planter aristocracy determined not to pay any taxes to the crown that installed them in power. maybe i should have said tobacco instead of banana.

i know you prefer to think of colonial north america as noble and hardy new englanders scratching a living from the soil in search of religious and political freedom (no doubt that's how you fancy yourself and your partisans). i see it a vast collection of corporate farms run by a handful of plutocrats. and that's how i visualize the world you are trying to sell us.

and spare us the whining about mao and stalin, and how wonderful the apartheid regime was. we already debunked those rhetorical fall-backs the last time we talked.