Royko on why it's harder to be a liberal than a conservative

[Scuba]

[Brigid]

1. I still have a couple of his books on my shelf.

Miss ya, Mike.

[planetc]

2. Wonderful man, and mind, missed to this day.

[a kennedy]

3. I might just have to use that as my new sig line.....

love it, and it's so true.

[progressoid]

4. He was great to read.

Thanks Mike.

[MisterP]

5. the bumper stickers and canned talking points provide a simulacrum of comprehensive knowledge

so any conversationalist has to know as much fact, in all fields, to counter the misinformation that ranges from 5th-c. Rome to the nature of statistics to the changes in the Muslim world in the 19th c. to the way the Fed works (the Nazi poet was *wrong*) to the stories of Krishna to the mid-70s rise of think tanks to the Chechen and Sri Lankan wars to the real history of the mujadedeen to the entirety of the Cold War--and they either have Alex Jones/Pat Robertson lies for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR POINTS or they just say, "well that's your opinion" or "that's politics"

they spray you with crazy so far removed from anything any academic says that you have to encompass within yourself the enormity research on everything