Do you ever try to mold your readers into your view on a topic or issue — on politics, for example?

Although I’ve been accused, upon occasion, of being “preachy,” that’s never been my intent. I do have an agenda on most issues, however, and that agenda is to raise issues and questions in a fashion that will cause readers to think about them and to question their preconceptions on those issues. In particular, I like to take on what the British philosopher Alfred North-Whitehead called the unexamined and obvious assumptions of society — those assumptions that are so fundamental to a society that they are seldom, if ever, scrutinized. The problem with this, of course, is that readers often say, “That’s so obvious.” And it is… except that it wasn’t obvious until I raised the question.