"All the facts" would seem to suggest that it is you who are erecting the strawmen. I see no contest to the assertion that you would rather have your debate in retrospect. (I don't see how you can.) That's the strawman. Have fun knocking him down.

BTW, sesquipedalianism doesn't make your argument any better, nor does martyrdom suit you.

Ah-ha! I see what is going on. You insist on having this conversation from a retroactive perspective rather than in the contemporaneous fashion that the topic was presented. Well, we'll never see eye-to-eye like that.

I can see also that you go in for minutia. But as the name of the episode relates, we are dealing with patterns, not specifics of force in the discussion.

I think, by your verbosity, that you are trying to exhaust me into ceding your point. That is not necessary. I cede it readily, which is to say I cede nothing at all, as your point drifts ever further away from the original topic of discussion.

keysmash - thumbs up!

Mugato - I cannot make you understand what you don't.

It really makes one think, doesn't it?

Ah-ha! Yes, I was taking you to juxtapose things you did not mean to. I agree whole-heartedly that on the right (which I will use in light of the hanging question regarding conservatism) there is definitely a ramp up of rhetoric, especially regarding the notion that "now is the desperate moment before all is won or lost" as it were. While certainly some folks buy into that, and doubtless the talkers know this, overall I don't put much stock in rhetoric or trappings as definitive markers of anything.

Action is the identifier, and I do believe that conservatives must act. That does not mean they act suddenly and capriciously. Bear in mind that a metered revolution is still a revolution though its outcome is not likely to resemble that of the spontaneous one. (see American Revolution vs. French Revolution). Do I mean that we are on the verge of riots and gunplay? I don't think so and I certainly hope not. But that is an eventual point on almost any line, so for conservatives to speak of it does not necessarily make them less conservative. The matter is more of whether it is appropriate to speak of such things.

Somewhere in all of this, too, is a discussion of the softening of rhetoric. That is, the charged words of yesterday have lost electricity. "Revolutions" and "Warriors" are not in the mind's eye the epic events and heroic figures they once were. The "revolution" takes place in a row of curtained booths. The "warrior" is someone not shy in his politicking. Guns and flags and armaments are simply not intended by nor understood of these words any longer, no matter how much the opposition wants to conjure up notions that they do. There will come a time when we relearn the meanings of these terms, it may be far off or very soon, but the point is that we do not mean what these words mean right now.

I could go on quite a tear about how Fox News and conservatism parted ways some time ago.

As to "social changes that are going to happen in the near future anyway," don't you think that rather underlines my point? If they are coming anyway, what's the rush? I'll tell you: the rush is the fear that the inevitable may not be inevitable, after all. (see: Mitt Romney)

You may not care, but I totally predicted a comment like yours before I even read the article.

Yes, but you are missing the point. The point isn't about Star Trek overall. In this case, it is specifically about Star Trek TOS and how, for a brief time in the 60s, the shifting ideology of the left overlapped with Classical Liberalism. Hence, the child of that fleeting union bears little semblance to the children that came later, TNG, DSN, VGR, etc....

Capt, you have a point, but I think you provided your own counter in your last comment when you said "I thought this episode exposed what people thought Nazism was in the 60's."

nolotrippen, LOL! "You sound like someone who would say 'black girl.'"

Hilarious! And spot on, too!