Longtime Cliopatria readers will remember that commenters here spent the Bush years revealing my identity as a radical leftist who sought to give aid and comfort to America's Islamofascist enemies, and yes, the phrase"aid and comfort" was really used. (I haven't been able to track down the one that called for me to be brought before a court martial for treason, but I remember it fondly.) This long exchange was probably inevitable, given that I was invited to join this blog after a long series of attacks on Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment; my far-left tendencies were already well known when I first arrived.

Except that they weren't. I declined the label at the time, and I still decline it.

Now, wonderfully, I am revealed by commenters to be a right-wing extremist, the type who probably drinks rainwater and grain alcohol because the Russkies are putting fluoride in the stuff that flows out of the tap.

A suggestion: it may be possible that there are people on the planet who believe some things that are generally associated with the political right, and some things that are generally associated with the political left. It may even be possible that there are some people who don't think the world sorts neatly into precisely two categories of thought, and have no interest in a fight between"the left" and"the right."

If the only or primary thing you have to offer to something that someone else writes is to try to sort what they write into a category and dismiss it with a quick label, you have nothing to contribute. Consider the possibility of a dignified silence.