HOW TO TELL YOU'RE WINNING. What bring tears to your eyes faster -- Lileks' Grandpa Simpson impersonation, or Tacitus' Farewell Address? My favorite piece of talking statuary is "feeling a profound disgust with humanity online." Assuming, perhaps unfairly, that he is not describing a new Sartrean Sims module, I take this to be another complaint about incivility online.

Yes, some of the conservative brethren have been talking about how rough the playground has become, particularly since liberals began to fight back. "Jane Galt" even says she's "ashamed" of liberals backing Fahrenheit 911 because the film has "no counterpart on the right" -- which is rather like the British complaining that those blasted American Revolutionaries keep breaking formation. (At the same time, she doesn't care that "Bush manipulated our fears of something bad happening to get us to support his policies" because "that's the definition of politics." No way you can lose with arguments like these!)

How well, though, do I remember those heady days when the greatest honor these patriots could bestow upon one another was the title "politically incorrect." No cows were sacred, no screed was too intemperate, and Fisking was the fashion!

Now we're all asked to be quiet and reasonable. Well, if you wrote the rules, I suppose it's only natural that you would imagine yourself able to rewrite them in the middle of the game. But if history teaches us anything, it's that no matter how sincere her protestations to the contrary, Lucy will always yank the ball away. Which is why it's time to stop trying to kick the ball and to start (or continue) kicking Lucy's ass.