I would never deny there's a huge gulf between studying something carefully and getting experience through living it. So I'd never overrate the contributions our huge academic labor force could make to our public life; but right now it's so underrated it's pathetic. Why is it that columnists with no portfolio of knowledge about anything -- except maybe washington insiderdom -- get paid and platformed to write / talk incessantly about whatever happens to come acros the transom that day -- from Michael Jackson to the rise of Hitler to green energy -- while people who work very hard to understand these things in depth are rarely given a microphone? It's not like it's hard to get a hold of people, or find them, these days. People rant about tenure, but the lifetime pundit on everything position currently offered by our newspapers is less rigorously controlled, more total in scope, and of course much better paid. Let's face it, we don't have an intelligentsia but rather a paid political hackery that poses as free thought -- even as people who are interested in thought for thought's sake are marginalized.

The reason Republicans will have a hard time gloating about this one is that the only Republicans who won did so by avoiding conflict with the White House, whereas the red meat eaters of the right were strong enough to sink their party, but that's it. This election was not a referendum on Obama. If anything, I think this is a very tough situation for the Republicans, in that the various wings of the party each will get some adrenalin, but there's no resolution to their basic dilemma (namely, that the base is essentially a regional party at best).

I suppose the biggest possible upside for the Republicans is the Virginia governor, who looks to be the potential leader the party has been looking for: a right winger who can be a chameleon and win by seeming normal; a smarter Mitt Romney. But Christie is clearly not a national figure. The one thing I worry about in all this is McDonnell.

If by becoming an "ordinary" nation, we mean a nation that is less imperialistic, less militaristic, more focused on sustaining the livelihood of its own citizens and by extension less materialistic (because there's no five car garage to be had) -- I'm not just okay with that, I'm excited. Because, frankly, many 'ordinary' places are better places for their citizens to live. I'm in Germany right now, and I have to say the people look happy and the streets are clean. This, as opposed to the bombed-out look most towns where I live in Illinois have.

We need to do less chest bumping about where we are in some totem pole and more modest looking around, about who we really are and who we want to be.

I think most Americans will be better off -- not materially, but spiritually and in terms of their physical and mental health -- once we are no longer the hegemon someone somehow talked us into trying to be.

So on the whole, this article made me happy: because actually I'm patriot enough to care not whether "WE'RE NUMBER 1!" but rather care about whether we are happy and free, which is what we said we wanted to do.

I guess in general I too would have preferred this article not to wander into easy assumptions about why there isn't as much sex counseling for prostate cancer as for breast cancer. But I'll leave that alone: my main worry is the little "factoid' that slipped in that's rather dangerous. As has been repeatedly discussed in major newspapers recently, prostate cancer screening has not had a major effect on overall survival rates and often leads to interventions with major adverse consequences -- including sexual ones. As a man in his 40s with two small children and whose own father died of prostate cancer at 60, having been diagnosed at 57, I watch this stuff like a hawk. That's not to say I'm not being screened, and it's not to say that I don't hope to be one of those guys who can be successfully cured if I get it. (1 in 4 chance of getting it, with my history). But one of the more painful myths surrounding prostate cancer is indeed the idea that it's an easy cancer if you just get screened, that it's readily curable and therefore (by extension) if you somehow missed it it's your fault. As with breast cancer screening, the truth is more complicated than that.

You chose to write on this. I found it simply appalling. The only thing I can guess is that Douthat -- who originally rode into town trying to be the "sensible conservative" -- has decided that Glenn Beck's bigotry sells better. It's a rather sickening display of pandering, really. And I felt profoundly sad and disgusted while reading it. Now, I'm just going to ignore him,like I do David Brooks.

The waiting is only the hardest part if you get what you want in the end. The waiting is only a pain in the ass if in addition to that what you get is not what you were promised, but a radically inferior substitute. Then it's the getting that really sucks. So I think this is a vital time for renewed and maximum pressure to get what you want, not what they think they can pawn off of you at the last second.

I'm afraid that this is not the only illustrated fetus spokesperson. For a few years now at least there's been a comics strip called "Eddie the Unborn" or something like it, in movement Catholic newspapers, etc. Don't have the exact title, don't want to find it since I don't want to reccommend it. But it's out there. Feature films no doubt coming.