Sam F writes: "Mitchell,  I am trying to have a real discussion.  It is
difficult to do sometimes, though."

These threads have rather dramatically illustrated the impossibility of
discussion when the parties lack a shared premise.

Sam is a sociologist, and I think the 'deeper' issue here is to identify the
social sources of such errant positions as creationism, libertarianism,
conspiricisms, objectivism (Rand), and similar perspectives grounded in
radical versions of the core of capitalist ideology: "the abstract --
isolated -- individual." Bruce Franklin's _M.I.A., or Mythmaking in America"
is a classic study which offers some perspective on these phenomena.

Carrol