I USED TO BE EVEN DUMBER... I'll pause a moment to let that sink in. Yes, it's true, it's true. Once I was 24 years old and capable of making statements like what I read on another blog. The pinnacle was reached when he spoke of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds "showing his ignorance" about guns. May he live to the day that he finds that statement as embarrassing as it ought to have been.

I have my disagreements with Dr. Glenn Reynolds, and I have areas of agreement with the other blogger. I'll confess that I admire Reynolds and am probably aping his blog even more than I intend to, but I've been in the other guy's shoes too. I'm just looking forward to the day that we see more maturity in his posts. Mine too, while we're at it.

My epiphany was at about the same age. A very nice middle aged man worked at a local Radio Shack and I was a chiphead, so I saw him regularly and we spoke often. This was in the days of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the early 80's.

One day in the store I innocently said something unfavorable about Falwell, which I honestly don't remember. It turned out that this gentleman knew Mr. Falwell and admired him, and he was very angry about my utterly gratuitous insult.

I was stunned. Nobody I knew could possibly like Jerry Falwell, and I certainly meant no offense. I apologized profusely, and should have, but things never were quite the same.

Meanwhile I thought about it. Actually I didn't know jack about Falwell, so I hadn't formed an opinion consciously (since then I have, and although he still doesn't get a fair shake, I can do without him). My college wasn't particularly liberal and I was living in the Bible Belt at the time, so it didn't come from there. I concluded that it had to have come from a steady diet of media brainwashing.