As long as there are people unjustly imprisoned by tyrannical governments, Solzhenitsyn's magnificent body of work will remain relevant. Just re-read the first few pages of "Gulag Archipelago" for a vivid sense of the utter hopelessness that arrest in a totalitarian society would conjure in its victim. Now magnify that by millions, and you can at least begin to understand the experience of living in Stalin's - or even Brezhnev's - Soviet Union.

More importantly for our times, with the advent of Guantanamo and "extraordinary rendition," the U.S. has now adopted the police methods of dictatorship. Shouldn't we suppose there are at least a few Ivan Denisoviches rotting away in Cuba - not under Castro's boot but our own?

I managed to make my contribution, but the servers must be overwhelmed. It's a great sign, inconvenience notwithstanding.

Thank you, Glenn, for helping to make this happen. Your post today was a perfect summary of the lawless idiocy of our corrupt, self-serving political establishment.

Part of what made the New Deal coalition so successful was that, in 1930s America, racial equality (not to mention gender equality) was a notion that very few white Americans subscribed to. The vast majority of the white population recoiled at the thought of any black person being their equal. This wasn't just in the South. The country was largely segregated, and separate but unequal. Racism was overt and often violent, even in the North.

Because so many social issues, like race relations, were considered "settled," and because of the utterly dire nature of the economic predicament, it made FDR's job a lot easier. "Just focus on the economy" was a viable political alternative in the face of 25% unemployment.

The country we inhabit today is vastly more affluent, with the comfort and energy to expend on social issues. And it may have been the unfathomably deep well of Nazi racial/ethnic animosity, and its disastrous consequences, that helped lead Americans to explicitly repudiate racism in the latter half of the 20th century.

Lind's advice is anachronistic and simplistic. Social issues won't go away without some sort of economic catastrophe.

Party-girl daughter of sleazy, horse-slaughtering attorney leads life of dissolution and excess.

Slick trial lawyer with a streak of narcissism a mile wide (and who came within three percentage points of being vice president) latches onto said party girl to feed the yawning chasm of his ego.

Isn't this combination of dim-witted, useless rich and self-centered politician a perfect statement on what makes America tick?

I'm dismayed by what I've seen so far of the Obama campaign. As best I can tell (by my purely anecdotal experience), Obama is still more or less following in the well-trod path of Dukakis and Kerry and allowing himself to be smeared.

Posting rebuttals on a website just doesn't cut it when the other side is running attack ads. All during the Olympics, I've seen McCain's ad that critiques Obama's "celebrity" status and makes the implication of some sort of cult of personality. Just this morning I heard on NPR about some 527 group that's launching ads drawing connections between Obama and former members of the Weather Underground.

Are there Obama attack ads? Where are the left-leaning 527 groups that are preparing similar commercials concerning McCain's treatment of his first wife, or his apparent cooptation of a Solzhenitsyn quote describing life in a Soviet gulag (and applying it to his experience as a POW)? If these do exist, why do I, living in a contested state, not see or hear them? Obviously this is just one person's experience, but I'm getting that sinking feeling again that we have a candidate who thinks he's above it all.

I was with you in your condemnation of the sheer silliness of what passes for discussion of feminism and gender issues (like this article) until you started your Islamic fear-mongering routine.

Yes, it's certainly true that most Islamic countries are deplorable when it comes to women's rights, and it's certainly true we in the West need to find ways to fight, or at least undermine, the oppression in those countries.

The problem for your type of rhetoric, however, is that it's often been the West, especially the U.S. and Britain, who have at key times in history succeeded in undermining democratic and civil liberties reform in these very countries because we didn't want to risk a popular uprising that would make our oil too expensive. So we installed the Shah in Iran and have cozied up to the Saudi royal family for decades. Let's also not forget how much we loved Saddam Hussein when he was fighting Iran.

If you're truly concerned about the impact of religious fundamentalism on women's rights, why not choose a target much closer to home: the Christian right? Unlike Islamic radicals on the other side of the world, they're a much more potent day-to-day force for retrograde policies here in the good ol' USA. Currently, they're trying to enact the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. in South Dakota. And they might well succeed. Where's your concern about that?

But I suspect you don't really care about women's rights the way you pretend to. No, usually when someone starts ranting in completely ahistorical fashion about the terrible Muslims, it's a pretty good sign that person has more in common with those oppressive Muslims than he/she cares to admit.