As a follow up to my point about how I can't get past the Crazy from the Right, here's a good blog post from David Frum, the apostate conservative blogger.  It makes the point that conservatives keep arguing against straw men, extolling the virtues of capitalism vs. socialism, as if there's another side that's proposing full socialist solutions.  The summation line is the one I really liked:

All these questions are raised within the context of an almost universal national commitment to market economics. If we didn't live in a market economy, these questions wouldn't arise in the first place. To answer them by invoking the superior merits of capitalism over socialism is like an auto mechanic answering questions about a malfunctioning car by launching into a speech about the superiority of the automobile over the horse as a means of conveyance.

Exactly.