NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the extraordinary message discipline among conservative bloggers in their portrayal of Obama's rush to stimulus as a "fear" campaign. As you know I'm not a stimulus enthusiast and hardly equipped to speculate on its chances of success or failure. Neither are most rightbloggers, but they display a fierce certainty about the issue that is fascinating in an Angriest Dog in the World sort of way. On those rare occasions when they talk about alternative strategies, the fascination quickly turns to horror.

While it's probably for the best that genuine intellectuals don't run the show, in times of real peril the benefits of democracy are sometimes very difficult to see.