Aptly named, I'd say!

I think you woefully underestimate pro-lifers in thinking they wouldn't foot the bill for your "million babies" you'd like to see so unceremoniously "dumped." Most pro-lifers, like me, are deeply committed to this cause. I would gladly pay 10% more in taxes, or more, if it would end abortion, and I don't think I am alone.

A lot of people on the left love to attack caricatures of pro-lifers, but the truth is we don't want to order people around, and we don't want (at least I don't want) to impose a religious state. We simply think abortion is killing, and unnecessary killing at that.

Shouldn't morality begin with the idea that life is unique and sacred? If it doesn't begin there, then where? It can't begin with freedom, since there is no freedom without life. Freedom without prior respect for life is brutality, i.e. Nietzsche's Will to Power.

But if I were you I wouldn't put that option on the table if you want to preserve abortion rights. If you tell pro-lifers they can have zero abortions for higher taxes, they will take that trade -- I would, in a heartbeat.

Let's not forget the other side of this war -- not only are people being thrown in prison for no good reason, but people who suffer from severe pain are unable to get the relief they need because of the fear.

For seven years I have practiced primary care medicine, and I run across patients complaining of chronic pain almost every day. But society refuses to put up the resources to help me evaluate these patients. I cannot find therapists or psychiatrists who will screen patients for addiction risk. And when I find a patient I think is addicted, there is no one who will help me get them out of trouble.

DEA agents come to talk to me on occasion about difficult patients, but I have never found a facility that wants to help them medically. It seems the police is more interested in drugs than the medical community is. So for trying to help people down on their luck I get to worry about being arrested and having my livelihood taken away.

After putting up with this garbage for seven years I have finally done what any sensible person would do. I quit. I am closing my practice in a month and will probably never practice outpatient medicine again.

If society is going to give me nothing but grief for just trying to help, I'll find another way to spend my life.

Many of your points are well taken, but you are not addressing the underlying issue, which is global warming. If global warming is occurring, and if it is as bad as many scientists think it is, $10 per gallon gas is a bargain in the deal. We are talking about rising seas swamping Manhattan, droughts moving the wheat belt north into Canada, and mass starvation in the tropics because the heat will kill of most of the plant life. Not to mention global water shortages.

Arguing over a few billion to build lines to wind farms missed the point. Our entire infrastructure will have to be rebuilt from the bottom up, and this will cost way more than a few billion.

Personally I think it will have to be done. I am convinced enough of the danger of global warming that I am prepared to live a lower standard of living if it helps us to avoid it.

Lieberman should be thrown out of the party now. He disagrees with Democratic policy on too many things (especially the war). Democrats need to have some kind of ideological discipline, or it means nothing to be a Democrat.

HOWEVER, let's not take this thing too far. The Republicans have made a train wreck of their own party precisely because they have hyper-organized themselves into a jackbooted legion. The Republican party is now too restrictive ideologically to even house all conservatives. I know -- on many issues I am a conservative, but I can't bring myself to be a Republican because their views are so restrictive. And borderline racist.

Democrats have a big tent right now and they need to keep it that way. Let's just be careful, that's all.

The attitude of this book, and of the article,isn't that society would be better if public life were a little more secular (which I think is a fair point). It is that religion has nothing positive to offer to society.

That viewpoint is bigoted and offensive. The reason Scandinavia has it good (and I'm not sure how good it really has it) is that it is a relatively homogeneous society. Of course there is less prejudice if everybody on your block looks and thinks like you.

Human history is rife with conflict, but not all conflict is bad. From conflict we get sparks, from sparks we get new ideas and fusions.

You want to eat oatmeal the rest of your life, knock yourself out. Scandinavia's great contributions to modern society are Volvo and Ikea, and both are unbearably boring.

So if you like unbearably boring, you might as well go now. Because it isn't going to get any less interesting over here.

Americans only seem to respond to crises. We need a crisis, manufactured or not, to spur mass transit development.

In the 1950s, Eisenhower got funding for the interstate highway system by arguing good roads were needed for national defense. In the event of invasion or nuclear attack, good roads were needed for troop movements and mass evacuation.

We need to use the same argument now. Mass transit, especially inter-city transit, allows rapid evacuation of cities after terrorist attacks. It also allows for mass evacuations after natural disasters. A train running from Jacksonville to San Antonio, for instance, would ease evacuation in the case of another Katrina.

Americans will buy that. Even though it is not entirely true, it is a strong selling point.