Last night I had dinner with my daughter and her husband at Brick, a San Francisco restaurant we have happily frequented for the past couple of years. Since I am constitutionally unequipped to follow politics on my own, these two young people patiently bring me up to date on the state of the nation whenever occasion offers. My daughter, for example, informed me over dinner of the fact that the Republican candidate for vice-president believes as an absolute unarguable truth that the earth is no more (and no less) than 6,000 years old.
"It's a free country," my daughter explains. "You're entitled to think the world is 6,000 years old. You're also entitled to think the world is made of peanut butter."