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How about I post a retort,

but its a picture of Obama, or Pelosi, with crosshairs on the sweetspot?

Have its underscore say "I want the red mist"?

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Or you know you could respond to the body of the essay and state problems you have with arguments made within in it.

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This one in particular is meant to spark a conversation; in general, Salon seems to be more about analyzing and discussing than news-making.

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What if my daughter grows up to be Democrat?
At 12, Lizzie is a Tea Partier like me. But what if one day she embraces the Democratic party, like her grandparents?

My parents are Democrats. I'm a conservative. My husband is to the right of your average Bircher. Dinners together walk a tightrope of small talk -- none of us wanting to veer too far in either direction, frightened we'll go careening into a political abyss. Our daughter, Lizzie, is always a safe topic. She's our Switzerland.

But I'm not sure how much longer that will last. Lizzie, at 12, is becoming politically aware.

She's always been well informed. Not that she had much of a choice. After the 2000 election and before her first birthday, she participated in her first pro-Bush rally. I stuffed her in her bright green baby backpack and headed to Times Square. There, she grinned and drooled as tourists in fanny packs and white tennis shoes yelled mean things at a dozen of us who were protesting the Democrats' election fraud in Florida. Thanks to the Supreme Court, George W. Bush was sworn in -- thus assuring that Lizzie's formative years had ample opportunities for protest. Her favorite was the huge pro-war rally in Central Park, when she was 3. There were balloons and face painting -- and the playground near the park was more exciting than the ones back in Brooklyn, N.Y., where we then lived. Riding the train home, she waved her small paper flag like a sword and chanted, "'Merica! 'Merica!" Then she yawned and asked for her sippie cup.

I don't want to indoctrinate my child into the cult of my political beliefs. I want her to make up her own mind. But, since she's a kid, she mirrors our beliefs, as her friends do their parents'. If I were a union thug, an elitist intellectual, an Olbermann-watching left-winger, she would probably share my misguided views. But I'm a pickup-driving capitalist--and therefore so is Lizzie. (Except the driving part -- at 12, she doesn't yet. Thankfully.) It's not like we sit her down with Edmund Burke flashcards or whisper Ann Coulter to her as she sleeps, but we talk a lot at dinner, discussing politics and what's going on not just in our neighborhood or city, but in the world. (We recently chatted about climate change and chocolate eclairs -- and, because my husband is a historian, she probably knows more about Kierkegaard than any other kid her age.) But how to balance the way we view the world with how other people do? How to show her both sides of the political picture?

Our family dinners are very different from those when I was a kid. Back then, we didn't discuss politics at the dinner table -- or anywhere else. Our household was more of a dictatorship, with my dad's liberal beliefs reigning supreme. There was no room for dissent and none encouraged. When I was in second grade, I made up my own mind about an election. Our teacher gave us each a copy of the Weekly Reader, which still smelled of fresh newsprint. One story was about the '72 election and we got to vote! I'd checked the box next to Nixon's head. It was a nice head, I'd thought. He looked so smart compared to that McGovern fellow. I skipped to our house, no doubt wearing an outfit like rainbow shift and headband, something that would have fit in more in, say, 1964 San Francisco rather than 1972 Omaha, where we lived at the time. I have no way to prove this scientifically, but I'm pretty sure we were the most liberal family Omaha. While other kids were attending Up With People concerts, we were singing along to the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar".

Dropping my plastic school satchel on the ground, I proudly pulled out the secret ballot to show my parents. "No one in our house votes Republican!" my dad scolded. He was joking, of course, but I still felt ashamed, like I'd just admitted I loved guns or Christian Evangelicals. How could I have been so wrong? I should have voted for McGovern! My parents later did, but he lost. Meanwhile, I slunk off, feeling like I'd committed a crime. I have no idea if I crumbled up that Weekly Reader or if my mom eventually stuffed it in the trash. In my mind, I picture myself crumbling it up, my first foray into politics a horrid mistake.

But do my husband and I truly encourage dissent with our daughter? What if Lizzie decides she wants to volunteer for whomever runs on the Democratic ticket in 2012? She'll be in eighth grade then. Would I drive her to help with that campaign? I happily drove all over eastern Pennsylvania when she wanted to canvass for Bush. She held pamphlets as we meandered door to door, encouraging registered Republicans to vote. Would I do the same quite as cheerfully if she supported Obama? I don't think so. But I honestly can't see Lizzie embracing a Democratic candidate. For her, politics is all about values, and for now, at least, she values family and religion.

And how to explain "values" and the coded semantics of political language to a kid? During a recent local election, Lizzie and I trawled the voters' guide, which was filled with names and photos of candidates and blurbs about their positions on various issues. One candidate had written she supported "intellectual values." I muttered, "Uh-oh. I'll stay away from her."

"But Mom, aren't intellectual values a good thing? Our family is intellectual," she said, puzzled.

I tried to explain that those "intellectual values" were often quite different from what our family values.

If she someday embraces "intellectual values," the intellectual elites or other left-wing agendas, could it damage my relationship with her? Although I try to understand my parents' political beliefs, I don't. When I see what Newsmax "article" or Wall Street Journal editorial my father "hates" on Facebook, or glance at a photo, taken a few years back, of my folks dressed as Obama and Biden for Halloween, I feel physically sick. Sometimes it's hard to even have simple conversations with them. Even the most innocent pleasantry, like "Nice weather," could spiral out of control if I don't watch what I say. (For the record, they are loving grandparents and are far more gracious than I am about not bringing up delicate topics.) If my dad says, "I bet you guys are happy you're not back east this winter. Climate change has sure screwed things up." I'm tempted to mutter something about the idiocy of climate change, but instead I bite my tongue and say, "Yes, in Portland we don't have to shovel rain."

It sometimes seems my parents and I are as divided as Congress, neither side understanding the other's point of view. But when I'm around them, I'm somehow whisked right back to adolescence. I morph into a sullen 16-year-old with no power, whose views are considered childish. I want to engage, to discuss topics calmly with them, but my emotions knock any possibility of cool-headed debate out of the way. All my facts and statistics -- the cornerstone of rational debate -- get gummed together in my mouth by raw emotion and I only manage to get out incoherent raw ravings. And if history is any indication of the future, I'm doomed to repeat myself.

I wish I could calmly debate issues like my husband does. Or maybe I should take a lesson from Lizzie. The truth is, she can teach me a thing or two about politics. Instead of getting scorched by the heat of the moment, like I do, she's cool and collected. She listens intently. Then a question she asks will sum up the prejudice of the other side quite succinctly. "Why do Grammy and Grampy want Charlie's lesbian moms to get married? That's not right."

And she's right. It's not.

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