The comment I made was about the value of historical people writing serial letters instead of just reading little one-of-a-kind snippets. But you are right. If I remember that set of comments correctly, it quickly wandered off into useless land as well.

If you'd like, happy to go back and flag it.

I'd like to view my responses as being consistent, but I know too much about how we all are screwed up to buy into my own bullshit. In my defense I believe my goal with that comment was to encourage people to read more history in long-form from the participants themselves. At least I think that's what I was doing. I know I went back and rewrote it a couple of times to make sure I wasn't wading into hero-worship, gossip, or partisan stuff.

I'm not that big of a Reagan fan. I'd view him in the top 1/3rd or so of presidents in the last century, but that's mostly because of his skills as a communicator and his ability to practice retail politics. Seems like the politicians that spend years doing some kind of face-to-face work like Reagan (working for GE and as governor) or Clinton (as governor) end up being at least more interesting as historical figures than the rest of them. Chomsky I have very little opinion about. He seems to like using his understanding of the philosophy of language to make political points. That's interesting to me as far as it goes. Hell, I'd love to talk philosophy of language, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with anything as far as what we're talking about. If anything, Chomsky to me seems one of those people who is still buying into his own bullshit -- but what do I know? As a famous person once said, a man has to know his limitations.

Damned internet. :)