But going down the line, it's probably true that, advocacy-wise, lefty bloggers make the most of their limited traffic by being very party line on Bush and most domestic issues. The "righties" aren't. About the only things they've been consistent on is France and Saddam, and both issues are declining in importance. While the liberal bloggers tend to be good liberals, the conservative bloggers don't tend to be good conservatives [That's because they're libertarians! -ed.]. Tacitus always seems somehow apologetic about linking to FR; the Left isn't similarly concerned about linking to DU or quoting it authoritatively.

How can someone who calls himself a political theorist not know the 'issue' of France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq was a non-issue to any thinking person all along?

Often, Right Wing bloggers seem to be writing from Karl Rove's latest talking points memo, which they have placed right next to their computers. In fact, if anything, many of them, especially the Southerners, are even more steeped in backward thinking than other conservatives. Where else online would one find people who regularly declare the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, insist the Second Amendment applies to the individual's right to own weaponry and long for the gold standard? Free Republic, you say. And, you're right. Most of the Right blogosphere is Free Republic for people who read blogs. Anyone who believes FreeRepublic represents the best in thinking or writing is either unlearned or out of touch with reality. Ruffini may be both.

Calpundit Kevin Drum, a post-Agonist scandal Higher Being himself and thus one of the people being disrespected, goes easy on the vacuous looking and thinking Ruffini.

This kind of stuff is always a bit silly, I suppose, but when you include Little Green Footballs and Steven Den Beste as examples of cosmopolitan flexibility, haven't you gone beyond silly and entered some kind of parallel universe?

Now, we can argue about whether or not Atrios is a beautiful prose stylist, but the idea that the famously fractious left is some kind of disciplined monolith well, we can only dream about such things, can't we? So if you want some entertainment, click on the link to Patrick's post above, read the hilarious, almost self-parodic procession of comments, and then leave one of your own. You'll feel better after you do.

Since that required spending extended time at Ruffini's extremely creative to a Young Republican red, white and blue site, I didn't.

Did I say Walter Mosley's writing isn't as smooth as that of some other contemporary writers of literary fiction? Well, Mosley could teach the Patrick Ruffinis of the world a thing or a thousand about both writing and thinking. It is unfortunate they would not read Mosley, even if they read literature, because his works humanize black people, something folks like that avoid like the plague. And, therein, is part of their problem in my opinion. They are so busy congratulating themselves on a presumed superiority to everyone else, they live, as Kevin said, in a parallel universe. In their world, people like Mosley don't exist.