I agree that anyone who supported the Swift Boat Veterans for Slander is guilty of, at the least, very poor judgement. (At the most, they're guilty of treason -- but that's an argument for another time.) But the simple fact is that, right now, real Americans need all the allies they can get. If Cronin wants to place himself on America's side, even temporarily, then I say we welcome him. If and when we ever get our country back, then there will be time for recriminations. Right now, in case you didn't notice, there's a war on.

I know you like and respect Chafee. So do I. If there were more Republicans like him, the party, and the Senate, and the country, would be a much better place. But there aren't -- or if there are, they've all been chased into hiding. The result of this is that a vote for Chafee is a vote for continued right-wing dominance of the US government just as surely as a vote for, say, Frist or Santorum. So this November, folks, you have a simple choice:

Vote for the Republican Party, or vote for America. You can't do both.

Gandhi's nonviolent resistance worked because he was dealing with Englishmen. Martin Luther King's nonviolent resistance worked because he was dealing with Americans. How well would either of their campaigns would have worked out against Nazi occupiers if the Germans had won World War Two?

Face it, nonviolence only works if it arouses the conscience of the powerful -- and for that to happen, the powerful have to have a conscience to begin with. The British and US governments of the mid-20th century certainly did. (I'm no longer sure they do, though.) For an example of what happens to those who preach nonviolent resistance against governments without a conscience ... hey, what was the name of that guy who got nailed to a cross a couple thousand years ago?

Clinton was not in the military. (Neither was Lewinsky, of course.) This is a tangential issue, but it's relevant to today's world, with Bush parading around in a flight suit pretending to be a macho warrior.

As a veteran, and as an American citizen, I'm deeply disturbed by how many Americans seem not to realize that "commander in chief" is a job title, not a military rank. The President is a civilian, and there are sound historical reasons why the writers of the Constitution made this choice. This means, among other things:

1. Unless you're in the military, he's not "your commander in chief," or "the commander in chief." The way the title is thrown around often makes it sound like all Americans are directly under the President's orders, a dangerous type of militarism in the most literal meaning of that word.

2. The President should never wear a military uniform, nor return salutes from military personnel. Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower -- the Presidents who, I think most people will agree, knew more about the military than any others -- never did, because they understood this.

It was Reagan ("I'm not a soldier, but I've played one in Hollywood") who started returning salutes, and Bush the deserter who first wore a uniform. Hint: look around the world at countries whose leaders wear uniforms, and those where they don't, and think about which kind of country you'd rather live in.

Written science fiction is conservative? What the hell are you talking about?

Yes, there's Pournelle, and Bova. But Asimov? Clarke? Or leaving the old giants aside, how about some of the (slightly, in some cases) more recent greats of the field like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Joe Haldeman, Ursula LeGuin, Greg Bear, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, Nancy Kress, or Kim Stanley Robinson? Over the last half-century, diverse voices like theirs have made literary SF what it is today -- and you'd be hard put to dismiss them as a bunch of reactionaries.

Writing thought-provoking fiction that doesn't fit comfortably with a particular worldview is an inherently progressive activity; combining it with carefully worked out speculation on the future of society is even more so. Battlestar Galactica is welcome proof that media SF is finally catching up. It's about time.

And for those who automatically dismiss BSG, or any other SF regardless of the medium, as "nerdy" because it's got, you know, spaceships'n'stuff -- maybe try some of the authors mentioned above. You may find some of your prejudices overturned. Or not, of course, since it's in the nature of prejudice to ignore evidence to the contrary. In the latter case, too bad.