> Sorry to overstate what could have been a reasonably
> debatable point (for me). IMO describing the said-
> activists in that way is no more or less provocative than
> the way the left seem to think anyone right of Linda
> Chavez is some stooge of the neo-nazi's.

This entire paragraph is a bunch of hooey. No more or less provocative, maybe--but no less based in fantasy. Describing environmental activists as terrorists only serves to point out your own shallow understanding of these issues. The environmental debate isn't about liberals and conservatives--last time I checked, Daschle and Lott were breathing the same shitty air. Linda Chavez? Neo-Nazis? You have a real gift for tossing around inflammatory language without really saying anything at all.

> Like I said, `Bulverism` is an excellent essay, and if CS
> Lewis was wrong I'm relying on you to tell me otherwise.
> (When I mean `wrong` I want to know *why* he is wrong,
> not *how* he is wrong.)

This is easy: Lewis wasn't wrong. You were wrong. Lewis didn't write an essay about Daschle and Billy Jeff, he wrote an essay about what he saw as a proliferation of shoddy debate tactics. You presume to tell me that we "get all our information from the eco-terrorists" and "the only credential they seem to give in the hope we'll believe them is that they aren't part of the corporate machine." Both of which are false statements. Both of which smell slightly of Bulverism to me themselves.

First of all, we do not get all of our information from environmental activists. That's a ridiculous statement on its face, and I'm surprised at you. Second, the credential blade swings both ways. Not to mention, if I'm faced with two studies, one sponsored by a privately-funded activist group, and the other funded by a corporation that stands to lose money by disrupting current business practices, you're damn right that "not a part of the corporate machine" begins to look like a pretty decent credential.

> Far be it from me to flog a dead horse, but perhaps you
> could maybe photocopy `Bulverism` for Marty. Once he's
> read that instead of sounding like an embittered TV
> researcher on Leno ("HE'S A DRUNK HE'S A DRUNK") he can
> come across as someone who has got a substantive
> alternative to the current pack who are running this
> show.

Again with the liberal celebrities. You're right, Richard, it is a dead horse, and one nobody cared about when it was alive. Who cares what celebrities have to say about politics in general? No one I know takes Alec Baldwin or Barbra Streisand seriously as a political analyst--nor do they care what Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis have to say about current events. They're actors, for Chrissakes. For you to get so hopped up about an annoying byproduct of our celebrity-worshipping society exposes your own desperate willingness to attack anything other than the real problem.

> I'm not a hardfaced right-winger...if you can actually
> explain to me why it's ok for the Majority leader to vote
> against arsenic reduction, then lambast the president for
> doing the same thing then I'll happily join the leftist
> utopia. Is it something more subtle than a double-
> standard? If he's lying about that, how can anyone hold
> him up as the knight who'll lead the charge against the
> corrupt corporations?

It isn't okay, and nobody said it was. Who held up Daschle as the knight of anything? The Democrats are just as beholden to special interests as the Republicans--it was Clinton's people, after all, who did the largest amount of damage to campaign finance law since Richard Nixon, not to mention hammering through NAFTA. These are not liberal issues, they are not conservative issues. They are populist issues. Your endless squawking about party lines does nothing to advance a serious dialogue.

> The truth shall set us free,

Indeed...