It may be my imagination, but I think I've seen the number of conservative readers tracking and responding to my blogs increasing dramatically of late. This is probably a direct result to my relaxing my own internal guidelines on how often I'll post politically themed blogs, but I've noticed a drastic increase in the number of responders disagreeing, sometimes rather sharply, with my godless, heathen liberal views. In the interest of self-preservation, since I know that you conservatives take no prisoners, I figured I'd state a few thoughts on you folks now. I really appreciate you guys. Seriously. Of course I don't always like your comments when I first read them, but part of my own personal beliefs is that views that aren't constantly being challenged and reexamined aren't worth a whole lot. If someone's views can't withstand scrutiny, then they aren't very well thought out. I hope that others hold themselves to the same criteria. One of the main things that I hate about the U.S. political system is something that raasnavj alluded to recently. There exists no room to admit that you're wrong, uncertain, or to even acknowledge that someone else has good points. To me, the far greater weakness is to never admit mistakes than to make them, admit them, and take your lumps. I'm certainly not perfect and neither is any politician out there, no matter how much we may agree with their views. Believe it or not, I really do think about and consider everything anybody says to me in my comment section. Granted, I don't usually end up agreeing with some of the more conservative comments, but I never dismiss them immediately without thinking about them. Now, granted, I differentiate between the rude, crude or otherwise trollish comments of some folks and the serious responses from thoughtful conservatives like zgreenwell, hokies1313, authorjerry and johnsteed, but that doesn't mean that I don't give the comments involved due consideration. So why did I decide that this post needed to be made? Well, we're two months away from a pretty important and serious election in the US. Senator Obama is essentially running on a platform that says, "If you didn't like the Bush years, vote for me." (Paraphrased.) If we have sharp disagreements now, chances are those disagreements are only going to increase in the coming months. I like my readers, even the conservative ones, and I wanted to openly express that I don't care how much you disagree with me, I'll still value your inputs. That is all.