You know, I have dinner with my family, send my oldest son off back to his dorm, bathe and put my 6 year old daughter to bed, crash for the evening after taking in part of a baseball game and watching the 1st installment of the John Adams mini-series, get up, go to work and just before I get ready to leave, I turn to Salon and lo and behold your all still goin' at it! What fun!

Raise up, you're doing a yeoman's job of attempting to reason with our good friend Teleologicus who must be exasperated at our collective ignorance regarding his pet thesis regarding the regrettable nature of today's youth and their lack of -I'm getting lost here but I think he's talking about education and/or maturity?! All I know is that someone doesn't measure up and it's our fault for nominating Obama? Am I right? Not sure. I hope he continues his dissertation because I certainly do want to know how I don't measure up because really, our republic CANNOT continue if in fact it is populated by the likes of us!!!

Please oh, Teleologicus perhaps you and your good friend Wackus Maximus could but perhaps put your misgivings in layman's terms, so lofty is your rhetoric, so decorous is your language, so circuitous thine logic but yay, how I do praise your ability with Wikipedia and you have truly mastered the art of copy/paste.

come on guys...get real. after 8 years of w., you think palin is lowering the inetelectual level of the republican party?...i am so confused.....i thought the whole world knew that channey had been running the country...into the ground. so, the republicans have a v.p. candidate who believes that proximinty breeds experience and the democrates have a presidential candidate who slept through 20 years of church sermons. either way, i feel that we are being sc----d and WE are the ones paying. welcome to the kangaroo world !scares the begollies out of me.

First off, I find it deeply amusing how you at once try to argue that criticism of Sarah Palin and John McCain is the hubris of overgrown teenagers while insulting Barack Obama at every opportunity. Who are you to question a man who has been in the U.S. Senate for four years and the Illinois State Senate before that? Surely *you* of all people could not be guilty of overbearing pride by your own definition?

Anyway, getting on to the real substance of the matter, I must agree, these despicable teenagers really think too much of themselves. Questioning authority and dogma never leads to good results, does it? You know, unless you exclude things like capitalism, social programs, civil rights, democracy (though I doubt you're a fan of that one), the advancement of science, and the general march of progress throughout the world.

I don't know about you, but I would trade your "high culture" for a world with less prejudice and more understanding, less war and more diplomacy, and less exploitation and more cooperation than the world 50 or 100 years ago any day. You do not seem to understand that no system has ever worked as well as democracy for any class of people, and that democracy is fundamentally based on second guessing authority when you believe them mistaken, which very clearly they can be and have been. It is not hubris to question them, it is the right and the patriotic duty of every citizen. Sometimes these citizens are wrong. But sometimes they aren't, and if discourse does not take place, including discourse even with certain brands of bizarre ideologues like yourself, the mistakes of authority will never be corrected.

I have no particular disdain for Sarah Palin (I think she is calculating, ambitious, and ignorant rather than stupid) and in many ways I have a deep respect for John McCain. There was a time when I considered voting for him. I just think that Palin is utterly unqualified to be President should the need arise, considering that to all indications she does in fact know less about national and international politics than I do on many issues, and she certainly knows less about the way the world works. I am allowed my opinion and that is not that *I* am necessarily more qualified than Sarah Palin for the presidency, but that *Joe Biden* is, and that *Barack Obama* would be more successful than John McCain as a president.

Fascinating.

When pressed to support your case with specific evidence, you mumble "I am afraid I cannot venture a guess", wave a palsied hand backward at the French Revolution, and then retreat even further to the comforting, dust-bound bosom of the 15th Century, decrying a "rupture in the Great Chain of Being".

Utterly. Fascinating. This must be what it's like to debate the vengeful shade of Arthur Oncken Lovejoy himself.

"People no longer know or accept their place in the order of things, rebel against superiors and authority, and fancy themselves the equals or superiors of the best who have ever lived... people on forums like this clearly view themselves as infinitely wiser than politicians and elected representatives they dislike."

Yeah. Democracy is a bitch, ain't it?

"It is nothing for the merest clerk or perhaps high school student to presume and present themselves as wiser in world and national affairs than Presidents and entire Administrations!"

Telly, what you deride here is a key precept upon which this great nation was founded. As a patriot, I consider this to be tantamount to your soiling my flag. You are on thin fucking ice, pal.

You still haven't answered my earlier questions (nor do I expect you will), but I'll rephrase one of them for you here and now: are you, in fact, a U.S. Citizen?

That's a binary question with a binary answer. Take your time. Think carefully...

If you are an American, then you are an American who espouses the Divine Right of Kings. I don't know whether or not this constitutes treason, but it puts you squarely in league with the lobsterbacks we threw out in 1783.

If you're not an American, and you're merely haranguing us from abroad, then I take no small comfort in the knowledge that your support of the McCain/Palin ticket will never translate itself into an actual tallied vote for them.

If you're not an American, and you're spewing this authoritarian trash at us from our own fair soil... please get the fuck out of my country.