Belinda, no amount of education can make you care about an issue. And as someone employed higher up in higher education, other than basic writing, reading and critical thinking (all of which are important), nothing the academy delivers is helping fix the mess the world is in. In fact, most of what universities do is promote passivity, instead of action. There are a few exceptions-- but when you think about the obsession on grading, neutral viewpoints, and already-sanctioned "just causes" (like diversity), the university is a neutered mess.

You want to make a difference, though? It is simple. Find something you care about. Make friends that care about the same thing. Cherish and nurture those friendships. Then raise holy hell with your friends. Drink a lot. Have some wild sex as well. Have fun with all of it. And don't be afraid to use some of those rhetorical weapons honed in the academy-- those of investigation, communication, and exposure. Put your brain to work on figuring out how the system that is creating your problem that you're working on works. Then work to change it, or monkeywrench it.

And pray like hell that there are a thousand other groups just like yours, who care about different things, that are doing the same thing about their problems. And rejoice in their successes.

It's a start. If it looks hopeless, then laugh. Why the hell not? Then get to work. The problem is not that doing something doesn't work. The problem is that no one seems to want to do anything.

I'm still ambivalent about my own analysis, but I'm starting to think that this kind of thing won't fly with the American people as a deal-breaker issue. Economic times have still not been good, we're in a costly war, health care and the prescription drug plan have wreaked even more havoc on folks' lives, and the budget deficit, as well as oil prices are soaring. The notion that Americans are going to cast their vote based on their senator's flag position just doesn't hold traction.

Both liberal politicians and conservatives are famous for underestimating Americans. What I've found is that true dissemination of real issues takes time-- and political junkies just don't understand this. And the populace has had time to recover from 9/11.

There are real things on the plate. My prediction is that with regard to the flag, the no-flag-burners are going to look like idiots.

While it may be indeed biblical, polygamy and its adherents biologically require alienation of younger males-- otherwise, considering humans are born at rates of roughly 50% males, and 50% females, the account just doesn't balance when one man gets 30 females. And single, adolescent and post-adolescent males become a population problem.

In "Under the Banner of Heaven", Jon Krakauer describes the Colorado City bunch, as well as a couple of others. Krakauer successfully divines the real problem with all such cults-- mainly the incumbent result of any faith that relies solely on personal revelation to generate dogma and practice. As Lily Tomlin so gamely said, 'you talk to God-- we call that prayer. God talks to you-- we call that schizophrenia."

Next time you need more evidence how corrupting such belief systems can be, look no further than to the President of the U.S. Putting aside the polygamy, the belief systems of Warren and G.W. are not that different.

Ok, pardon my confusion, but here you have a group of displaced Western Europeans, there because of some historical myth, that happened to take the homes of a bunch of folks who already lived in a given place-- with the same fencing-in of those people, and economic hostility directed toward them, and they're not supposed to get mad?

And then we have the same state, once again of Western Europeans clinging to a supremely dysfunctional myth as a "Chosen People", losing two individuals, and using it as a justification to create hundreds of thousands of refugees, and kill hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people?

More than anything else the current invasion shows that religious states are inherently failed states-- on both sides of the border. It profoundly shows the failure of treating terrorism as a war. It shows, once again profoundly, of the West's dismal lack of concern for basic living conditions of anyone outside Europe, the US, and Canada. It doesn't matter to us if a city of 2 million (or 20 million) has no clean water or electricity-- more bombs are on the way.

I believe profoundly in holding individuals responsible for their actions-- that includes the leaders of Hezbollah, as well as the leaders of Israel. But what do we really think we are accomplishing when we furnish a state such as Israel more bombs on an expedited basis while at the same time sending over Condoleeza Rice for the proposition of impossible plans for stopping the conflict?

How insane have we become? And how long before we stop supporting religiously based states of any stripe? Before, or after, we end up being part of an annihilated world?