There is a war going on. We fight. Suck it up.

And there we have it: the conservative mindset.

For the most part, liberals are trying to engage in dialog, come to meaningful compromises, and see the country do well.

For conservatives, it's a war. It's not politics; it's not an attempt to run a democracy. It's a war.

The next step, then, in the conservative mindset is easy to predict: all's fair. We've seen this with the Lee Atwater types. But if it's a war (and God is on their side!) then why not go the next step? Pick up a gun. Make it a full-fledged civil war.

We've already seen this suggestion out of conservatives. It's not difficult to see where it leads.

I just hope that, in this Civil War, we won't be shy about hanging the treasonous.

I've been to Bosnia, I've seen the mass graves, I know how this ends.

You're right, Chicken. Time to stop the Christian Nationalists now!

And then there's horseshit, which is precisely what this column is.

The conservative makes a typical error--confusing when something happened with what caused it. Historians agree that the USSR was on a slide long before Reagan showed up. While Reagan didn't "win the Cold War," his regime did manage to help create the terrorist threat of extremist Islamics that we see today.

In addition, it was Reagan's administration that shook the hand of Saddam and looked the other way while he gassed his own citizens.

And the economy? Perhaps the conservative has never heard of "the business cycle." Reagan reaped the rewards of being in the right place at the right time.

It's interesting that the conservative mentions one conservative president against three great liberals. I'll wager he can't think of any more.

After all, who is going to promote? His latest great failure, George W. Bush?

....and Hitler loved dogs.

Few monsters ever see themselves as such. The fact that Cheney doesn't understand that, say, Iraqis are people too--as well as his beloved homosexual daughter--just makes him more of a monster, not less of one. Because he can exercise his feelings only when he is directly touched.

Even a monster needs a heart; even a monster has blood.

The tactic of the Right that they never tire of using is simple: accuse your enemies of what you yourself truly are. Hence, with Obama, invoke the specter of religious extremism. With Sotomayor, invoke the notion that she's racist. To your radio audience, tell them that liberals run entirely on emotion, not logic.

Etc. Rinse and repeat; it never fails.

One of the right-wingers in this letter column said, shockingly, "she thinks she has better judgement because of who she is." Hell, I think I have better judgement because of whom I am. Limbaugh certainly does. Who doesn't?

There would be no identity politics without oppression. It's the necessary requisite.

He said that the Iraqis were better off without Saddam Hussein, which obviously could not have happened without the war -- a truism, which for seven years Democrats failed to concede.

Whenever conservatives use the word "obviously" or one of its many synonyms (clearly, doubtlessly, etc.), I reach for my Browning. They've usually got their hand in my pocket while trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Such is the case here--why is it "obvious" that it would have taken a war? Why is it "obvious" that we had to fight that war?

And why won't conservatives admit that we already fought that war (remember Kuwait?) and pulled back--the same people who decided that we needed to do it again (obviously!) a decade or so later.

You're sorely misinformed. Obama was my state senator. I had an Illinois firearms permit for two .38s and a 30-30. Nobody ever bothered me about owning them.

Do you all understand? David Horowitz is not an outlier among conservatives on this speech. From NRO, to the WSJ, they all agree; Obama said what Bush had already had said, and reaffirmed in principle much of what the Bush Administration stood for.

How rare for conservatives to agree amongst themselves! The only question is, who wrote their talking points for them?

You should know that Obama's district covered more than the City of Chicago.

All I needed to possess firearms was a firearm permit, easily applied for and gotten--a form, a picture, a few bucks. Nobody in Illinois can carry, unless they have a badge.

Shorter liberal commentators: "If you dare caricature any prominent minority, we will call it racist."

Oh, so now it's shorter people, is it?

it is highly unlikely that Republicans will lose support in the Hispanic community for voting against Sotomayor.

Because you can't lose what you don't have.

Hispanics, African-Americans, and many other groups in this country know precisely what the GOP thinks of them. They know how they have been, and would be, treated under the GOP. And so the wingnut is absolutely right: the knee-jerk opposition of the GOP to a Hispanic won't lose them many votes at all.

Just about everybody who has talked to one for more than five minutes.