It sounds as if you've found a straw Zionist to anticipate, Arsene.

Jimmy Carter has been as assiduous as you could possibly want in attacking Israel, including in his latest book.

I doubt that anyone would say that male fundamentalist behavior of any stripe is acceptable.

I also doubt, given the fashionable anti-semitism here on Salon and other places, that you can safely say that Judaism is exempt from ranting and bigots of various stripes.

Are you silly enough to think that even Zionists don't know about some of the Orthodox behavior? Or uninformed enough to identify Zionism with Orthodoxy? Those are two separate groups with disagreements of their own.

You've made your point. You did not make it well, but you made it. It would be more instructive if you presented, instead, an analysis of the various Muslim groups and how, say, Wahabism is far more rigorous than, for example, Islam in Turkey, and how the secular state there may differ from private practice. You could even add the outlawed Refah party.

Religion in the Middle East (even more so than in the U.S.) does not lend itself to short-term, binary, or simplistic analyses.

He's not powerful enough to be GIANT Bastard, any more than kidservative's paroxysms of name-calling and spite constitute a clever satire.

Yeah, they don't make 'em like they used to -- but skeet are skeet.

Spite and rhetorical posturing to impress the boyz back home.

I share your dislike of Palin and the premises on which she bases her appeal.

However, using "retard" to describe someone is cruel.

Her son is retarded/has Down Syndrome.

She is merely dumb like a fox and anti-intellectual.

Moron, cretin, and idiot all used to be words that denoted degrees and types of mental retardation. They've lingered in the language as insults.

We can do better. This is unkind to the mentally disabled and their families.

Let's look at it this way.

Why do young conservatives in the throes of a political (or whatever) crush write long strings of questions designed either to have no answer -- they wish! or to be answerable only in the way they choose?

Why have they never heard of rhetorical questions as an outworn trope unless a writer is very, very good?

Why do they think that "liberal" has automatic negative semantic connotations and that people wince under its lash?

If they are adopting the idea in Rhetorical Question 4 from their elders, what is the good of being a YOUNGservative?

Why do young conservatives go for synecdoche -- taking their individual experience for the (set of all political reactions)? Is this poor rhetoric or entitlement, given their age cohort?

Why do young conservatives make false assumptions and expect people to accept them and, therefore, their premises?

This isn't Montessori school. What you say, because you yourself and you say it, isn't automatically creative and brilliant and special.

Besides, it makes you sound unbelievably pompous.

Well, maybe not UNbelievably.

Laurel, I'm from near there.

Privilege doesn't invalidate this young woman's politics. If she's acting out, she's at least free to act out from a safe space. If it's genuine conviction, she'll be in a position to put it into deeds.

I don't understand what seems to be resentment of the girl and invalidation of her positions -- but then, I may identify with her as a second-wave feminist who sometimes had her own activism denigrated because it wasn't the "right kind."

It's possible that this young woman may feel the princess stereotype closing in and may not want to be part of it.

I did misread, and I see we're in agreement.

In my opinion, the women here who favor epidurals are enraged because of what this English man who is a midwife has said in laying down the law.

I went over to read his interview as well as the comments from English women. They are up in arms. Queen Victoria was instantly invoked and blessed.

My own sense is that the women favoring the use of medication are reacting with rage at this man. When you've been feedbacked until you lose your temper, you react vehemently.

As an analogy, just think if you couldn't breast feed and someone from La Leche got on your (or anyone else's) case.

Here's another sock.

It is not "playing fairly" for you to demand that I answer questions of your formulation.

Is anyone stupid enough to let you get away with that?

A rule of strategy is that you do not fight on the ground of your enemy's choosing.

A double! "Selfish" AND "uninformed."

What do you think you are, lecturing other women? A patriarchal white male?

Whatever happened to people choosing?

Correction: I do not intend to be constructive with these people. They've wasted enough of people's time and done far more than their share of damage.

They play some very nasty games of verbal abuse.

I will not engage them in fair play until they play fairly.

Gaming to keep their privileges by abuse, mockery or just talking people to death is not playing fairly.

You're right. I'm not being constructive. I intend to be constructive with these people.

I've had it with them.

As well ask me to grant academic respectability to a tin-hatter or a creationist (or is that redundant?).

Is that really how you hear it?

Do please let me recommend a good audiologist.

(Look it up in the dictionary.)

On one hand, it's a matter of marketing: they don't want the grief that self-acknowledged feminists get.

On the other, it's a way of having equal pay and "prezzies" too.

Good for your daughter.