We need to add more troops to our volunteer military. When you’re asking seventy-year-olds to serve, something is surely awry.
THE MICHAEL MOORE PROBLEM: Peter Beinart’s essay keeps getting attention, but I’m a little tired of these jaded conservatives predicting complete failure for the project of injecting a national security spine into the Democratic party. why is failure inevitable? I agree with Peter that abandoning liberalism’s inclusive social policy would be counter-productive. It’s one area where history is obviously on the Democrats’ side. A strong Democratic leader who took on the Michael Moores of the movement, while retaining the Democrats’ appeal to the excluded and marginalized, would do extremely well. Remember one Tony Blair, who took a far more ruined party and turned it into the natural party of government in a few years? And the Republicans – as fractious as they are currently hubristic – will soon over-reach. Beinart’s right. He just needs a leader. Right now, I see none. But no one ever does ahead of time, do they?
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Your recent piece on the high rate of divorce in supposedly “family values” red states missed an important point, of which I was reminded by today’s blog item on teen marriages. I’ve lived in the South for 30 years. Given the heavy religiosity in this part of the country, there’s a cultural emphasis on “no sex without marriage.” If you teach your kids to believe in Hell, and then teach them that they’re headed there if they engage in sex without being married, you reduce marriage to not a well-considered bond between two adults, but a license for two scared kids to screw. Of course, any marriage entered into out of fear of the devil or of social condemnation typically lasts until the participants find out there’s a lot more to life than fucking. Add to that the societal attitude that two kids getting married is a cause for celebration, rather than a life-ruining tragedy, and Christian fundamentalism pretty well foreordains the red states’ high divorce rates. It’s amazing they’re not higher.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.
DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “It’s like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn’t want to go. I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don’t want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we’re going to take it back.” – Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, New York Times, today, comparing “liberals” to al Qaeda terrorists. Sean Hannity must be proud.
The Dish 