I have learned so much here over the course of 5 years on a wide variety of subjects. If anything my perspective is more reality-based and moderate than when I first rolled in here. I posted some really stupid things here early on, when most of what I knew about politics came from paleocon cranks. But in light of all the facts and data and viewpoints of Charles and the other posters and the thousands of links I read through, I realized how crazy and just plain wrong some of things were that I had subscribed to.