And what you are doing is anything but encouraging people to think for themselves, John. You are ridiculing the thoughts and opinions of others and attempting to impose your own thoughts and opinions on them. That is more an example of attempted indoctrination than an attempt at getting people to think for themselves.

But let's address some of the specifics of what you said. You described one of my posts as "leftish hogwash".

It looks to me like you don't even know what the term "leftish" means. "Leftish" ideology advocates centralizing control of the market and the economy in the hands of the government. "Big government" as they say. This is what we have now with our cronyistic cleptocracy. There is nothing "free market" about our form of capitalism.

I would prefer an open market... genuinely free market capitalism in which market forces shape the market and the economy rather than vested special interests. This is a conservative philosophy, not a leftist one.