Ah... thanks for this response. The last half of your first long paragraph was particularly illuminating. I've become so cold to the value of politics that I'd forgotten that there was a time where there really were differing opinions and outlooks on life.

I guess it's time to actually read some Sowell, rather than just casually listening to his Hoover Institute interviews, and thinking that he's just basically re-iterating a common sense that the world seems to have lost.