Not an even cross-section: few progressives will sign up for something which strips you of your individuality and personality, out of a desire to lose yourself amidst something "greater."

Except that many do, whether you want to admit it or not.

Joining up automatically makes you "one who serves"--a hero. I really regret that. Maybe you do too.

No, I don't. I'm very glad of my service, and again, whether you're willing to believe it or not, what it did for me was to make me more fully who I am, not strip away my identity. Many other people have had the same experience.

Also? Be very careful with the h-word. "Hero" has a very specific definition in the miltary, and it's wildly overused outside it. During my two years as an infantryman and eight years as a medic, I knew many brave soldiers and airmen who served with courage and distinction, but I knew all of two who could genuinely be described as heroes. The idea that anyone who puts on a uniform automatically qualifies for that status is an insidious kind of dehumanization, and as such is a favorite of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders crowd.

Surely you would agree that those who would "keep on defending your right to be a self-righteous asshole, however little you deserve it," could readily be imagined as turning on said righteous assholes, as soon as they've had it "up to here" with them.

Can it be imagined? Sure. Is it going to happen? Probably not, at least not the way you're thinking. Because, you see, we aren't mindless drones. We know when we're being used, and we damn sure know it's not the "peaceniks," as you put it, who are doing the using.

Well, you see, there is a difference between the majority of Muslims who have no problem with a woman conducting public business, and the fundamentalist minority who are insane misogynists. Just like there's a difference between the majority of Christians who don't try to impose their beliefs on others, and the fundamentalist minority made up of nuts like you.

... suuure you did, buddy.

No one ever just "comes across" someone else's e-mails. It does not happen.

So he's a cheater. You're a spy. Not sure where the moral superiority is here.

Were you referrring to my post? Because if you go back and read it through (it's not long, you know) you'll see that I was very careful to make the point that most Christians are not fanatical fundamentalists -- any more than most Muslims. The vast majority of people of all faiths want to live their lives in peace, neither interefering with others nor being interfered with by them. Unfortunately, fanatics of all faiths have a habit of looking around at their neighbors getting along, saying to themselves "We can't have that!", and finding ways to screw things up.

I can't believe that there's a single one of these bastards who hasn't been cheating on his taxes for years. So if they want to take the bonuses, fine; let them understand that every financial action they've taken over their entire careers will be put under the microscope. Have the IRS go over their taxes, the SEC go over their stock trades, hell, have the FBI and the Secret Service go over every cent they've ever moved into or out of the country. There's nothing illegal this approach, and I rather suspect that a lot of the bonus recipients will feel obliged to ... um ... do the right thing and selflessly renounce their bonuses for the good of the country ... once this plan is announced.

You want to know how to "suck all the initiative out of everything"? Try this: pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to people who accomplish nothing except wrecking other people's lives, and then hand the bill to people who actually do real, useful work. Of course, in your ideal world, that's business as usual.

No, I'm not talking about masturbation, although of course the subject line is also true in that sense. ;)

I'm talking about imposing gender roles. Most of the women I know would have no problem if a man wanted to be submissive in bed, while most of the men I know (including myself!) are quite appreciative of "freaky" women. We don't go in for slut-shaming or any of that crap. Most of the pressure to be "manly" comes from other men, to have good locker-room talk ("You wouldn't believe what I did to her," etc.) and I get the strong impression that most of the condemnation of sexually assertive women these days comes from other women -- I don't know how many times I've heard women who are not the least bit shy about expressing their own sexuality call other women sluts for doing exactly the same thing.

I can't speak for women's motivation in doing this, though competition is a pretty obvious explanation. From the male perspective, I see it as part of a general increase in outward displays of machismo by insecure man-boys who don't have any concept of what manhood really means. It goes along with the currently popular military-style buzzcuts (almost invariably worn by chickenhawks who think war is fine and dandy as long as someone else is doing the dying) and the constant application of sports and war metaphors to the conduct of everyday business. Denigrating "sensitive guys" and bragging about their own largely imaginary sexual conquests is just another part of that, er, package.

Me, I did the macho stuff when I was younger. I didn't talk about it much, just did it. Now I concentrate on being the kind of man my father taught me to be, which means, first and foremost, a good husband and father. Hopefully a lot of these younger men-wannabes will figure this out at some point, but given how many guys in in my age group still act like that, I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope for many of them.