They follow a pattern; a mother writes about questioning some kind of rule that she thinks she should be following. The act of writing such a piece probably means that she is most likely coming to the conclusion that she is not going to create the the next Adolf Hitler (or in this case, the next guy who has to be removed from his house by construction equipment) by giving her child a Sprite. This is all to the good, because it means she probably won't raise nutballs. In an era where we are ruled by nutballs while being attacked by terrorist nutballs, it is a parent's most important duty to reduce the number of nutballs in the world.

I understand the importance of a good diet, and I agree that processed foods and sweets should kept to a minimum. That said, a lot of the whole-foods/vegan types are nuts with this stuff. The way they talk, you would think that corn syrup is worse than mustard gas. I strongly suspect that all this is not about food or health, it is about control; people who feel scared or worried about some aspect of their lives overcompensate by following a strict diet. This belief that some kind of vague physical or moral harm will come to your children if you let them have a cookie every now and again is depressingly similar to what strict Fundamentalist parents believe about rock'n'roll and Dungeons and Dragons.

If you really want to harm your children, raise them to believe that they can control everything in their lives, and that if they follow a strict set of rules about something you're obsessed with, they will be fine.

It is hard to sift out the blind faith in U.S. military power from the facts. It is a fact that the US military is one of the if not the most well trained and lethal combat forces in the world. Furthermore, direct confrontation with a conventional army is what our military has trained for and planned for for years. I remember the eve of the fdirst Gulf War, when the media was touting the Iraqi army as a serious threat to our army. In the end, the Iraqi army, with heavy equipment and armor from the sixties and no air cover or surface-to-air missle cover to speak of, was completely overpowered.

But...

A war with Iran would be a different situation. I think what Mr. Conanson is saying is, in general, correct, if not perfectly militarily accurate. If we were to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, it wouldn't be a quick strike; it would be intense bombing at at least 2-4 different strikes, and no-one can honestly say for certain that the Iranians would refrain from striking back across the Iran-Iraq border.

If they did, what would happen next? Our army is better trained and more well equipped than the Iranian army, but right now, our army is busy helping to keep things orderly in Iraq. an Iranian invasion would provide us with a Hobbes choice; with a total of 150,000 or so troops to work with, how many would we decide to redeploy away from their duties in Iraq to deal with the Iranian incursion? We could bring more troops to the region over time, but the situation would be very dangerous. Our Air Force is very effective and powerful, but it is not a Deus Ex Machina.

Striking at Iran would be very dangerous. Throughout history, great many military catasrophies have befallen invincible armies. The gods of war do not smile on unbridled optimism.

...really encapsulate comtemporary conservatism for me. Is this what it's come down to? I mean, what kind of person can write something like that and look themselves in the mirror? When he writes "...their contempt for civil behavior surpassed only by the emptiness of their own souls." it's hard to remember that he's not referring to members of the Ku Klux Klan or the Khmer Rouge; he's talking about people who write in to web sites. The phrase "...herein lies their greatest weakness: destroying a conservative is not to destroy conservatism." is not about a sniper who killed Domenech while he was at home, making a sandwich in his kitchen; it's about people who sent in proof that he had plagarized.

This is why I avoid blogs, but with the right nowadays, this type of breathless hyperbole is not confined to blogs; it's comes out on the radio, it's comes from nationally syndicated coloumists, and it creeps onto FOX's cable coverage. When I see something like this, I have to wonder whether they actually beleive what they're saying, or if they're simply consciously pandering to the lowest common denomiator. I don't know which is worse, but if it's the former, how can these people assert that they are the sober, rational, alternative to the "wild-eyed" left?

Michelle Malkin has been abducted and replaced with a sane person!!

...either we come off the other side of peak oil as a group of scavengers scrounging for rifle cartridges and unspoiled cans of Spaghettios, or our research in the field of nanobiotechnology enables us to break the carbon barrier, and we all get disassembled at the atomic level by a nanobot originally designed to freshen dog breath.

I don't think we can manage both.