Your attempt to claim literate, informed and fact-based debate as the historical turf of the “conservative Right” is an amusing pre-emptive maneuver. I suppose I could rebut with a list of right wing demagogues, but that’s irrelevant in the context of this discussion. I do note your gracious, if tacit, acknowledgment of my attempt to frame the current dialogue at a higher level.

That makes your characterization of my entrance into the discussion as an “invasion” a bit surprising, but never mind. Suffice to say that whatever the historical antecedents of the rhetorical styles favoured by our respective political camps, I’m sure you agree that what matters in a discussion is what’s being said here and now. To obscure the point at issue by holding one respondent culpable for the rhetorical sins of an ill-defined group in the past is a bit – well, unworthy, no?

As to what I offer (and please, rein in the hysteria) – I am, of the simple goodness of my heart, helping well-meaning (no doubt) but misguided folks to understand that, contrary to the assertion that launched this thread, we can, in fact, speak critically and with impunity on Mohammed (sic), terror, Islamism, fundamentalist Islam, race, religion, and cults. And we do.

I appreciate your nostalgia for a time when public debate was more informed, more literate, and favored “factsies” over “feelies”.

Unfortunately, decades of ideological trends mingling pedagogy and social development theory have taken their toll. It is notable that said “trends” were valiantly resisted by the (historically) more academically inclined conservative Right. In the end, the misgivings of the latter proved correct on just about every score…

So it seems rather RICH, if you will permit the use of the term, to invade a discussion and bemoan this fact without identifying it. Of course, that permits your Lefty voice to broadstroke commentators here as badly informed agents of the uneducated conservative Right.

Ahem. Sorry, old chap, but that just won’t stick!

I’m terribly pleased to see that your personal journey has produced one so very well versed in the packaging of perspective. The “packaging”, however, does not characterize the contents you have on offer in this case.

What do you have on offer? The status-quo? The death of democracy? The squelching of freedom of expression and religion? Sorry, I’m not buying.

Nonetheless, good luck with that…

Nooo actually you have outted yourself as a scion of false logic and objective denial….facts do not seem to trouble the myths you have fabricated as given truths.

You syllogism was fraudulent so there is no difference to divine.