It's true, this online democracy is rough sometimes. I first discovered online arguments through a local BBS. In order to continue, I had to toughen my skin somewhat. And be prepared to apologize or at least restate when I was wrong. I don't think it's changed my views much, but I have gotten to at least partially understand the right-wing perspective.

I've never had troubles with Gary Kamiya, who seems like a fine writer. I don't know about Stendahl, though, Gary. But all this tsuris is worth it if you look on the TIME blog with Ana Marie Cox and Joe Klein. The comments beneath the Klein postings are by themselves worth the price of admission. Well, the gasbag deserves it, and often gets it. And, most endearingly, it just makes him shake his great writer wattles at us.

It's always tricky. I don't know if I'm reacting to what I would have felt if I was there, or the sometimes-mistaken impression gathered from news reports.

But given that, I just think something's gone very wrong with demonstrations as an expressive act. All during the week, there's one dramatic story after another. And then, a number -- not that big -- of the usual suspects get together again, much older than I remember them, and they march and speak and denounce. The public has simply seen it all before. Those who were against the war are still against the war. Some have been added, but not by these demonstrations.

It would also be a good idea to get the Marxists out of the leadership.

The famous nuclear daisy ad against Goldwater was negative, not a smear. Goldwater had, in fact, spoken about the use of "low yield" nukes as a way to victory in Vietnam. The ad was never broadcast, in fact, but it was memorable and was repeated over and over as part of coverage about whether it went too far. In fact, it made no charges against Goldwater at all. Was he willing to contemplate the use of nukes in Vietnam? What would that mean to world peace and the chances of nuclear war? Good questions, no answers. Your opponent in a presidential campaign says he'd use nukes. I'd call that an opening.

Maybe it was unfair to Barry, but I personally don't have a much higher opinion of the irrational-rational religion of libertarianism than I did in 1964, when I couldn't vote.

I found out about 20 years ago that LBJ had, in fact, contemplated using nukes on North Vietnam. I also found out that he had rejected the idea. Would Barry have?

There's a crucial distinction, though: Republicans find Democrats socialistic, which they are from the GOP point of view. Democrats think Republicans are the servants of big business first and the people second, which they are from the Democratic point of view. The various parties and ideologies are antithetical and sometimes hostile to each other. If they weren't, we wouldn't have parties.

Democrats started Social Security and stand by it. Republicans were against it at the founding, then accommodated it because it was popular, and now are generally trying to replace it with a shopper's network or junk mail or something really nasty. (That's hyperbole, but not a the next step, below.)

The difference comes when you tell lies. You know, Whitewater-Travelgate-Clinton-is-a-murderer lies. That's where the line is crossed, and that's why they should take the word "News" off Fox. Presented with a "story" with absolutely no evidence, they simply parroted it. If Fox, or Insight, or the Washington Times, were really news operations, they would have sent a reporter to Indonesia and pronounced it untrue, most likely a political lie. But of course, they're not a news network, but a political dirty tricks operation from top to bottom.

This is racialist nonsense. One of the most popular athletes in the US is that part Asian, part black golfer fellow, who exudes some of the same sense of his race as Obama does. Not black? Don't be foolish. The thing is, for whites, Obama doesn't carry all that historical baggage with him -- and this is not saying that he's not progressive on race, just that the average white guy doesn't feel guilty in his presence. For multiracial America, Obama's a very good candidate. But for identity slave-desendant Africans, maybe not. Well, true. If you get a similar candidate, with such a soaring rhetorical style and a smooth, deep baritone, and his ancestors were slaves, well, he could have my enthusiastic vote too -- if he stands for the right policies.

I'm not going to dispute the facts that you allege; that there are many liberals who hang around richer enclaves I won't dispute. But people are people, after all. If you're a rodeo rider, you tend to hang with the people in the rodeo. College students and NASCAR fans hang around together, and on and on.

But think for a minute: who made it difficult for you to afford college? The right! They're the ones who cut the Pell grants; they're the ones who have upped the percentage on college loans, as a favor to the banks. They're the ones who made it much more difficult for working people to organize unions, that once upon a time made it possible to work on the production line and own a house and car send your kids to college.

Are there individual snobs among people with liberal political views? Yes. But you have to look at who's spent so much time and effort to make you mad, not at the people who put you in this situation, but with the people who might do something about it.