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All I can say is, "WOW"! This girl has the talent to make a big difference. I hope she has a great career.

Beyond writing, I put myself on the front lines of this ideological battle by taking part in counterprotests at the antiwar rallies leading up to the war in Iraq. This turned out to be a further wake-up call, because it was there that I encountered more intolerance than ever before in my life. Holding pro-Iraq-liberation signs and American flags, I was spat on, called names, intimidated, threatened, attacked, cursed and, on a good day, simply argued with. It was clear that any deviation from the prevailing leftist groupthink of the Bay Area was considered a threat to be eliminated as quickly as possible.... I was, in effect, radicalized by the radicals.

Though I part with her in being raised conservative, similar experiences with the Left really opened my eyes about the stakes involved in this culture war. In my first semester in college in fall 1998, I went to a conservative conference at Columbia University, an environment just as left-wing as the Bay Area. As I walked in to the Faculty House with some other conservative college students, about 100 left-wing protesters in a seeting mass shouted us down. The administration at Columbia caved to this group, and on the second day of the conference, we heard our speakers across the street in Morningside Park, again being shouted down and the situation requiring the NYPD to intervene and separate us. Between their mass display of hate, and the condescending treatment I got from one of them personally when I tried to talk to them and get a copy of what they were passing out, I realized I was looking at my enemy. As much as they need to be defeated, they also need to be pitied, since like this writer of this opinion piece, many/most don't know any better.

*** All I can say is, "WOW"! ***

"WOW!" My sentiments precisely; you beat me to it.

All I can say is, "WOW"! This girl has the talent to make a big difference. I hope she has a great career.

And she's really cute, too - I'd have asked her out if I hadn't been married 10 years when I first met her. :-D