at 8:03 we hear, "delivery of happiness...(?) What!

O, we can come here and be happy to up-chuck? If one feeds on vomit, vomit in, up-chuck vomit out? If some neocons wish to swallow vomit hungrily and with joy, happily, let 'um. Please leave the open-mouth-shocked liberals away. Tolerance is a difficult test. Huck.

O, a "surge." You know nothing about love or war, or how to live happily. The gang that you hang with rape and plunder on a daily shoot-to-kill base instinct. Daily, we see a bunch of poo-eaters. You put that poo-ball in a punch bowl, and watch 'it' float, and gulp that too? --I yield to consider what you drool in the punch? Wiser people are not so thoughtless and eager for a belly ache of that sort...

If a lovely thought or an opportunity to 'surge' is afforded us in private quietness, it's best to enjoy a happiness and pleasure for open-mind liberals that last. We are gentle and slow. We want the pleasure of a higher-thought or virtuous act to last. I/'we' remain as happy as long as I can. Let's prolong happiness, squint our eyes with pleasure--hope we can prolong kind-words or act with beautiful affection, rather than surge like a dog-mongrel-mutt that's a scrounge half-breed beast. okay?

Some of us feel lucky-dog happy if a natural liberty and freedom like that Happiness's happens once in a blue moon? Why boast like a hog who shoots blank "surgeShit" six times a day. What?

I think a blogger sipped bad brew with a bunny rabbit and found great pleasure sleeping in this Monday? "That's Great," a cute tiger would growl to say? I don't know much about the birds or bees, but I am glad some one can do algebra. Ouch. My head hurts from a hammer knock in the night? Happy day! Happy.

That liberal vision in 18th Century America?

It was, actually, and a surprisingly progressive one given human slavery was an acknowledged and accepted institution back then.

Call it moral relativism if you wish. I call it viewing the past for what it was.

In any case, we are talking about what is at issue today, in the early 21st century. Feel free to join the conversation on those grounds. Or don't and keep making a fool of yourself.

Your choice.

As an American, I consider it shameful that Paul even has to bother to set you folks straight, but I'm certainly glad that he's both willing and superbly able to do so. Would that we had many others like him, with both the knowledge and the patience to correct the knee-jerk assumptions about the other which are so common right across the spectrum of political opinion in this country.

Civilization, and our understanding of what is and isn't civilized, is a long journey. Paul is quite right to point out that much of what constitutes our civilization today is owed to the very people we are now so busy murdering when we aren't equally busy demonizing them. Shooter probably hasn't the slightest idea what the concept of zero has done for us, for example, and I suspect that he isn't alone in his ignorance.

Apart from that, the charges leveled against Middle Eastern tribal cultures -- from the Burka to the blood-feud -- were part of our own culture not so long ago, and there are some, notably Christian fundamentalists, who still lament their passing. Never mind the only good Indian is a dead Indian, Mr. Brown, have you never heard of the Hatfields and McCoys, or of Ian Paisley?

Yes, the liberal vision condemns such practices, and understands that tribalism has seen its best days, as has nationalism, yet that which comes after us will be a collective enterprise, no less than that which came before us. The devotees of fear, ignorance, disgust and destruction among us are a burden on that vision, and on that enterprise, regardless of their cultural antecedents.

We both want the same things essentially, but differ on how, or even whether, a particular goal is achievable.

As a moderate libertarian I want people to be free to do as they wish unless or until they violate the rights of another.

As a moderate liberal I distrust corporations as immortal and amoral entities that need to be closely regulated due to their vast power from their economic clout.

I do not believe that corporations are citizens, in my view only human beings can be citizens. Only citizens should have the right to influence government policy through the exercise of their franchise.

The situation we have today is corporate lobbyists actually writing the bills which effect the corporations for which they lobby. I'm quite sure that the founding fathers did not have this sort of arrangement in mind when they wrote the Constitution.

Also, I believe that any government largesse should go only to citizens, not corporations.

I'm not at all sure that we want the same things.

Rosenberg --

Especially since the barbarism is overwhelmingly in the eye of the beholder. Iraq, of course, is the cradel of civilization. They didn't invade us. We invaded them. In violation of the UN Charter, which under our Constitution is the law of the land. We are responsible for Abu Ghraib. Yes, they lived under a dictatorship, whose leader we helped bring to power. But.....

Yes, they lived under a dictatorship, but.... How elegant, how banal.

"Barbarism is in the eye of the beholder." This is the declaration of someone who declines to judge anyone on the basis of their actions. Except of course, those who guarantee his speech.

So rape rooms, actual torture, killing of civilians by the hundred thousand is less barbaric than deposing the dictator?

I've called the UN a despot protector before, and apparently Rosenberg agrees with sentiment. Protecting American citizens, and simultaneously relieving Iraqis of totalitarianism is apparently more noxious than one man depriving an entire country of all the liberal ideals of our founding documents. Tsk.

The allegiance of civilized peoples is to the community, nation and world, regardless of family, religious or ethnic ties.

I don't know about you, but my first allegiance is to my family, they come before anything else as far as I'm concerned.

Blood is thicker than water after all.

As for ethnic and religious ties, perhaps you ought to speak to the nation of Israel, they are considered civilized despite the fact that Israel was specifically founded on an ethnic and religious basis.

Tribal ties? What are fraternities but a form of tribe where the members call themselves brothers and pledge an oath to each other? There are also other forms of tribal cultures in the western world, Masons come to mind pretty rapidly.