Well, my friend "Surrender" was back commenting on my P/N blog one more time, and I must say that, even though I got a little snippy with him yesterday, he was very nice today.

"Sorry...here is where I was getting the Obama budget. http://www.onlineforextrading.com/blog/federal-budget-broken-down/Perhaps the site has dubious information. I don't view this discourse between you and I as a contest. I view it as a chance for acquiring new ideas and modifying my beliefs. You correctly pointed out that I am not a true conservative...yes...and I am not a liberal either. Does that make me a moderate? Nope. Who cares what my label is! My goal is not to be right, but to gain better insight and let my beliefs evolve as they will.Look, you are clearly well educated in things economic and militaristic.  I am not. That is why I read your blogs.... I learn. That is the value for me. I listen to the left and the right on radio, (I have XM), Fox and CNN, I read Noam Chomsky and William Bennett. My point is I don't cut off any possible avenues to learning and understanding our world. When a topic arises I feel like I am free to form an opinion without limiting myself by internally saying, "oh, I am a conservative, so I have to take this position". It's been a good exchange and I think I have served as an adequate stimulus for you to represent your views. I hope you got as much value from that as I did from some of your information. Good day!"

So, I replied back, of course:

"O.K.  I looked at that web site, and I'm not sure where they get the $671 billion number from.  It may include Iraq/Afghanistan plus-ups, but it's hard to pin those kind of things down.  Anyone who's ever tried to analyze the federal budget, even just a portion of it, knows how difficult it can be.  In any case, their statement that the DOD budget is almost half the federal budget is clearly wrong.  

They may mean that it's almost half of discretionary federal spending, which is probably true when viewed from a certain perspective.  That perspective includes Medicare and Social Security as non-discretionary spending, but I think we could reduce those outlays if we came up with a better system.  In particular, George W. Bush proposed what I thought was a very reasonable plan in 2004 to salvage Social Security, and the Dems and their lackeys in the media immediately cried, "George Bush hates old people" or words to that effect, and G.W. just gave up rather than try to educate people as to why his plan was a good one. In a few years, though, those chickens will come home to roost, anyway.

I thank you for your comments, and I hope I'm helping you in some small way.  Reading other points of view is a good idea - I do it myself - but I'll caution you that Chomsky (since you mentioned him) is a fine linguist but has little understanding of why people actually do what they do.  He's a Utopian socialist, and those folks see the world from a viewpoint that's completely unrealistic.  They should have learned from the experience of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but the only "lesson" they've "learned" is that the "wrong" people implemented socialism there, which is why they think it failed."

And, yes, I find these exchange useful, especially as they force me to think about how things work to defend my views.  I'll reiterate one more time that I have plenty of compassion for the people who deserve it, but I believe in tough love for everybody else.  I've had plenty of real-world experience to convince me that this is the right way to go.  Thanks again for your comments, and tell all your friends about me.  Good day to you, too."

This was a good exchange, because these are exactly the kind of people I'm trying to reach.  I hope I'll succeed eventually, but in the end, I'll have at least done my best.