We need a world where open conversations can be had, where goodwill is extended, where listening occurs, where values trump country, and country trumps party. We need to discuss what constitutes the good life, and how we can all achieve it. We need to be able to arrive at objective facts, and punish liars. We need to understand how many people can't compete intellectually owing to the IQ they were born with. Our lives are finite, incalculable suffering is all too real for so many, many people. Love and empathy have to be discussed, and modeled, and enacted. And we don't need mutually incompatible texts supposedly created by an omniscient, omnipotent deity to do this. I know, it isn't going to happen anytime soon, and given our tribal nature, it probably won't, but it's the most noble thing mankind can do. Thomas Hobbe's once opined something about life being short, nasty, solitary, and brutish. But it need not be. This creation of Dan's, and the few good folks who've remained,  make it less so for me. I feel a bit better, only a bit though. 

Peter T.