I realized, just the other days, that Normandy was sixty years ago.

The beginning of the end for Hitler (in the West) was sixty years ago. Hitler has been dead (or in Argentina) for almost sixty years. Japan has been without an expeditionary military for almost sixty years.

Think about that for a second: The war that is still the touchstone for everyone when they think of war, the baby boomers notwithstanding, was two to three full generations ago.

The men who stormed Omaha, Juno, and all the rest, and lived, are dying very quickly now. They came back, usually voted for Democrats, raised a bunch of spoiled brats, and grumbled about health benefits for thirty years; they came back, worked their tails off, rarely ran around beating their chests about how heroic they'd been, and never once suggested that America had fought in the Pacific out of racism or imperialism.

Both of my grandfathers served in the Pacific. I was never very close to my maternal grandfather, but neither talked much about it: They simply went out, did their jobs, and returned home. The net effect -- combined with the efforts of millions like them -- was to stamp out right-wing tyranny in the Pacific, and hybridized left/right tyranny in Europe. It's not their fault that we lacked the will to kill off the left-wing tyranny in Asia and Europe on their watch.

Billions of humans are better off for their efforts. Billions more will live and die, wanting, laughing, needing, crying, loving, marrying, reproducing, mourning, praying, without once looking over their shoulders for the dark shadows that love to kill freedom.

The men five years after fought to keep the slow shadow of communism from bringing even more under its long night; it's not their fault that the people they saved have grown soft under the blanket of security they provided.

The men twenty years before them fought in a meat grinder, over some stupid European kerfluffle that should never have been; but without them, there would not be an England. And a France, but again, that's not their fault.

The men sixty years before that fought to preserve the idea of Union. They died by the tens of thousands on beautiful landscapes, near verdant forests and running streams, broad plains and the foothills of mountains. They fought so that government by the people would not perish. They fought -- perhaps incidentally, but bless them for it -- so that some day, all Men would be free.

The men twenty years before that fought so that Texas would remain part of the Union, and ten years before that, so that a petty dictator would not trample the rights of free men and women.

The men fifty years before that fought for the idea that government flows from the people; and that absent their consent, there is no government. We owe them boundless thanks for their pledge of their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor; and we owe them an understanding of what it means to pledge those things.

You'll note that I have not referenced any war after Korea. That is because I must segregate:

The men who fought bravely in Vietnam; Grenada; Panama; Kuwait; Somalia; Bosnia; Kosovo; Afghanistan; and Iraq: We owe them our thanks on our knees. They fought when others spurned the words "honor," and "duty"; they fought when it was harder than ever to do so, as so many spit at them for having the unmitigated gall to believe in the American idea, and that it was worth fighting for; they fought for us, and, in some senses, the world.

The men and women who spit at them: We owe them nothing. The men who fought, then came back to spit at the men fighting: We owe them less.

To all the men (and, sadly, now women) who have died for this great Nation: God keep you; God bless; and, from our hearts: Thank you.

Interesting new entry: The Boileryard. Stop in and check it out.

(Interesting arcanum: His blog is self-confessedly a reference to Boileryard Clarke, a lifer during the deadball era. Deeply cool.)

So let me pose a hypothetical:

Suppose -- and I think we can take this as a given -- that there are people who so very much hate the existence of gay men and lesbians, that it actually hurts them. They are gnawed-upon from the inside over the existence of homosexuals, for whatever reason. And, unable to bear the emotional -- and physical, in an ugly biofeedback loop -- pain, they begin sneaking up on gays while they sleep and butchering them alive. Literally: They crush, slice, and dice the bodies of these men and women, ruthlessly. They feel better when it's over.

It would not be too much of a stretch to call this inhuman. Someone who did this, deliberately, with malice aforethought, is in a state of grave sin, and should not receive communion in the Catholic Church. This is straightforward stuff. Any politician who enabled this behavior -- who said, I disagree with his choice to murder these people, but I also understand how much pain he's in, and so I refuse to interject the State into what he does with his own body would rightly be considered at best deranged, and at worst, a cold-blooded murderer. I don't imagine many people would take issue with the decision of any Church to deny that politician its sacraments.

You see where this is going.

I understand Kerry, and Cuomo, and Kennedy, and other blood-letting, coldblooded, power-mad psuedo-Catholic politicians overlooking human biology and the teachings of their faith, and trying to pretend that their sin represents bravery. They're morally incomplete; they're, like most humans, greedy, grubbing little creatures who desire power more than they desire the warmth of God's embrace.

It happens to the best of us.

What I don't understand is their flackers. Like, just for example, Andrew Sullivan. So, without fisking his argument, let's just say it this way: If you put "murdering sleeping gay men and women" in place of "abortion," you kinda gotta concede that, first, he would never make this argument; second, that his Catholic formation, such as it was, was sorely lacking; and, finally, that it makes him a bit of a moral monster.

Oh: Ramesh was too kind.

Now, let us speak of war.

Before we go any farther, I should note that I think we're now at war, and it seems broadly self-evident to me that this is so. On September 11, 2001, as I stood in my living room and saw replay after replay of airliners striking the World Trade Center, I thought, So this is war. Strictly speaking, I now see that we've been at war for twenty-five years; we were just so caught up with the bigger war we were fighting, and then the joy at the end of that conflict, that we didn't notice until 3,000 of us died in a single day.

The default conservative position on war, contrary to the overly-feminized bleating of the sham of a Left we have these days, is powerful opposition to anything but obviously defensive war. That position, like most conservative positions, is open to a certain amount of give in the face of reality; but let us not forget that William F. Buckley, for example, was a determined isolationist up until Japan dropped tons of explosives on the U.S.S. Arizona.

I am not an isolationist. I am what Walter Russell Mead (incorrectly) calls a Jacksonian. If the rest of the world prefers to go to Hell in a handbasket, I invite them to make sure the door does not strike them in the posterior as they exit. I abhor nation-building, because although I hold certain truths to be self-evident, I'm not sure everyone else does, and if they don't, it can be one hell of a mess convincing them they're wrong. I don't believe in proxy wars, limited wars, or humanitarian wars. Each, in its way, is an oxymoron. And, worse, they don't work.

I have, historically, made exceptions. I favored at least arms supply to Bosnia and Croatia during the dissolution of Yugoslavia. I truly came to hate Clinton for how he treated Rwanda (for a man who could emote at the drop of a dime, and was allegedly our "first black president," he didn't show a lot of sympathy for the mass murder of thousands of black human beings). I was in favor of bombing Kosovo, though I was worried (not worried enough, as it turns out) about the KLA. (Hey, we bombed the Chinese Embassy -- at worst, it was a mixed-result war.)

I think, and thought, that intervention in Haiti was a mistake. Same goes for Liberia. I'd like to see Chavez executed in a specially arranged coup d'etat, if the CIA could get off its useless behind for ten minutes. (There, it would be All About the Oil and All About Killing an Obnoxious Marxist Dictator.) Same with that old loony in Cuba. We should have blown North Vietnam, then, as needed, China, into the Stone Age. We should probably up our military aid to Taiwan, build more nukes, and point them right at Beijing. We should be prepared to invade Paris on general principle, and especially be ready when either the French begin their genocidal purge of les beurrs, or, more likely, when France adopts sh'ria (yet another reason for the French to hate us -- you have to wonder why they haven't gone that extra mile yet).

Broadly speaking, though, I believe war is only acceptable to achieve some definite national goal, and, once begun, no amount of force should be held back (except in reserve, so you can pound any remaining resistance into the ground afterward). I might make an exception for genocides, but the caveat about unflinching use of overwhelming force remains.

That brings us to Iraq.

Like I said, I hate the idea of nation-building. And strictly speaking, Iraq did not pose an immediate, tanks-at-the-border threat to us. Actually, let's take that in reverse order:

The fundamental truth of the post-Westphalian world is not so much the Nation-State, but the border. Borders imply continuity; they define a State; they are lines from which you can separate the world into discrete pieces. Thus, the French did not place the Maginot Line ten miles from Paris; they placed them on the border with Germany. Up until very very recently, you knew your enemy was planning an invasion because he placed men and materiel on his border with you, and looked menacingly at you the whole time. Thus, one could say, Canada poses an imminent threat to us, because their cutting-edge 1960s military is looking right over the border at Vermont.

Transglobal terrorism changes the rules. An angry Iranian mullah could arm Arabs (or Persians, or Arab-Americans, or Persian-Americans -- while I have no doubt that the vast majority of the latter, American groups would not take part in such a thing, it is impossible to eliminate any possibility of a few malcontents) with nuclear suitcases, send them across the sea, blow up Boston Harbor, and we would never have seen it coming. The post-Westphalian model no longer applies, at least as well as it used to. The danger is not enemies staring at us across a common border, it is enemies walking among us, blowing us to pieces, with no advanced warning.

Hence, Iraq.

Maybe Hussein had no WMDs. Maybe he did. I tend to think he did, as any idiot can make sarin if he really wants to, Baby Assad has been awful nervous lately, and the "Bush lied about WMDs!!!" garbage demands a proof of a negative. Anyway, I think we can all agree that at the very least, it wouldn't have been too tricky for Hussein to make so-called WMDs. (A note: Chemical and biological weapons really aren't "weapons of mass destruction." They tend to burn out or dissipate too quickly for that. Nukes are WMDs. Asteroids could be WMDs. Ebola is a terror weapon.)

And that rather leads to my point: We thought Hussein had those weapons; it would have been far too easy to slip a vial of good ol' Black Death to some death-cult madman to take out a good part of a city to let that loony tune live. We live now in a world where the old certainties created by borders don't exist. Kim Jong-Il could decide to let loose on Seattle with a guided nuke, or with a suitcase nuke. We'd know how to handle the first; we wouldn't know whom to blame for the second.

Thus, it is better to preemptively blow our enemies into little bitty pieces. The stakes are too high to hold hands and sing, "Give peace a chance," on the odd hope that our enemies will do a lamb-and-lion bit with us. So when Bush said, "Hussein is going down," I was there with bells on. He might or might not have been a deadly foe; best not to take the chance, instead of mourn in three months when L.A. is up in glowing flames and NYC celebrities are worried that Americans will overreact. Why we haven't target-nuked every nuclear facility in North Korea is a continuing mystery to me.

These wars, you see, are for the explicit purpose of making sure no more Americans die from hostile, foreign action. No amount of force is "too much." Any amount that accomplishes the end is "just right."

Thus, I'd like to see "just right" amounts of force aimed at the following enemies, in descending order:

Iran
North Korea
Syria
China
Cuba
France

Let us not lie; these people are our enemies. They seek our humiliation, death, and/or subjugation. We no longer have the luxury to employ 19th Century Diplospeak for years on end. When the world is a safer place (for us absolutely, for democracy only as it makes the world safe for us -- see below), then we can retreat to arguments about the marginal tax rate and overtime for union employees, and global environmental initiatives. (That's assuming we reproduce enough to have those debates -- but that's a rant for another time.)

Curiously, that leads to Iraq and nation building.

Like I said, it would be an understatement to say that I detest nation building. Of all the trumped up left-wing idiocies ever, nation building seems one of the very stupidest, and that says a great deal. It combines all of the worst sins of the late British Empire with the worst naiveties and misconceptions of the perpetually stupid left side of the political spectrum into one magnificant waste of time, lives, and resources. And this is me toning it down.

But I'm prepared to start making exceptions.

Iraq might, just might, be the lynch pin that shows the Arab world, Yes, it is possible to live in something other than oppressed, wretched squalor. Maybe we can turn it into a functioning state -- I do not demand, and do not expect, American-style democratic federal republicanism -- but a normal, consent-of-the-governed modern State would do the trick. That's worth a gamble of men and materiel, especially (1) when we have so much of both, especially the latter, and (2) when you think that one of the more telling knocks on us, post-Somalia (another mistake, start to finish, by the way), was that we were an impotent giant.

And, assume for the sake of argument that Iraq falls to pieces. I'll grant that. Suppose it turns into a militant theocracy. I'd gauge that as extremely unlikely, but I'll grant it for the sake of argument. It's still better than what was there before. If we can get that much in place -- and make ourselves safer in the process -- I'll take it.

The old rules went out the window about three years ago. I just kind of wonder how long it'll take the Democratic party to catch on.

So now that I'm back, let's talk about a few things. We'll start with gay marriage. (Why not?)

I'd like, before I go any further, to direct you to my prior words on the subject here. And note a few changes since then. Most of them center around my naivete.

Three weeks after I wrote that, I had a discussion with a senior associate at my firm. Nice guy; if not brilliant (and he probably is), very close; thoughtful; and gay. I mention the last because he told me, in no uncertain terms:

(1) I'm not merely a bigot, but a monster, for trying to stop the legalization of gay marriage.

(2) This is not something that can be debated among rational people. I'm simply evil.

(3) My "noble, but meaningless" belief that "the law matters -- if you strip aside all the trees of the law, you'll have nowhere to hide when Satan comes looking" and my antiquated belief in a separation of powers are either dodges (at best), or more likely naive maliciousness (he explained how that's not oxymoronic; it made sense at the time). And:

(4) No weapon was beyond reach to make gay marriage a reality. The explicit comparison to Jim Crow -- from a man making six figures, with the respect and esteem of not only his immediate colleagues (including myself), but of the profession, who was never, you know, forced to sit at a different lunch counter, or drink from a rusty old water fountain while others were allowed to drink from the clean one -- was breathtaking in its force, conviction, and, let us not forget, absurdity.

So:

I am now wholly in favor of the most restrictive possible Constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage imaginable and politically workable. If it must allow civil unions, so be it; I'd rather it forbade the whole slate. Screw federalism.

I say this because I now understand that I've been thrust into a war for which I did not ask; in which I never expected to be; against enemies whom I had never thought of as enemies, who in turn view this entire conflict as Manichaean in nature, who have absolute conviction behind them; and over an institution at the very base of society, the existence and nature of which no one would have thought to question with any seriousness for centuries. If a man who I would otherwise have thought thoughtful and moderate is actually a raging demon where this is concerned, I can only imagine what the activists preparing papers are like.

Norman Podhoretz once said something to the effect that in a contest between two sides, when one has unlimited aims, and the other has limited aims, the side with the boundless goals wins by definition every time. I therefore adopt a boundless goal: The complete denial of gay marriage throughout this country and, if I have my way, every other country in the world. (Except Europe: They're dying anyway. I don't want to waste the time on them.)

I'd also like to make a rather straightforward point. Conservatism is not an ideology; it's an inclination. It's the subtle but unmistakable certainty that changing things, while sometimes necessary and good, is almost always bad. Not to go all Andrew Sullivan and start casting my ideological opponents into the outer darkness, but you cannot be a conservative and advocate gay marriage, unless you believe that the harm society as a whole experiences is akin to the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. It's precisely that simple. To be in favor of overturning countless years of inherited wisdom and tradition based on a fifteen year old political movement, with spurious claims to victimhood and suffering, is not to be a conservative; it is to be an unapologetic radical.

Just so we're on the same page.

I'm aware that it's been about four months since I posted regularly. I probably owe all of my (two) regular readers an explanation; you'll just have to accept an apology. Life got hectic for a while. No catastrophes, no disasters, no emergencies (well, two, but they were small).

So: My apologies. It'll happen again, kinda. See below.

Anyway, here's the deal.

I'll be posting again, regularly. But probably not here, precisely.

I've spent the odd moment at five in the morning (while shaving, which wasn't the best idea ever) thinking about where to go from here. I have to maintain my anonymity, because lawyers are probably the most closed-minded people outside of a university campus, and let's just say my political beliefs don't line up well with most of the profession. (I had an opposing counsel recently tell me, offhandedly, that conservatism by nature of the tendency itself means that one is predisposed to bringing back chattel slavery. Seriously.)

Blogger has been pretty well ideal, and since June 2003, I haven't really had any problems with it. But Ben let me take Movable Type for a spin, and it was... well, you can't go back after that. And I'd like to upload pictures, and silly things like that. And have my own disk space.

On the other hand, while I'm not precisely a cheap S.O.B., I'm also loathe to spend money on server space. Well, not precisely -- more accurately, I'm loathe to spend money on server space and a domain name that could be fairly easily used to track back and find out more about me, and therefore disqualify me from future employment. (Brief caveat for those who know me: I really like my job. A lot. But I don't count on anything any more.) If you know my (Dungeons and Dragons reference) true name, you can find a lot of garbage I've already put out, that made its way net-wise, deliberately or otherwise. I'd rather not add to that stockpile.

But a personalized page would be sweet.

Anyway, long and short of it is, I'll probably post here a little longer, then get around to a new site. Probably.

I've also been invited to take part in something bigger. Cooler. Faster... well, you get the idea. I'd rather devote most of my blogging time to that, for a host of personal and political reasons. I'll provide a link, once it's operational.

Anyway, short of it is, hiatus is over. Let's rock.

This brief hiatus from my brief hiatus of blogging is brought to you by this public service message:

Pray for Stuart Buck, guys. Three times the man I'll ever be, seven times the lawyer. Life sucks some days. He's got a wife and two kids. If you don't pray, send happy-energy thoughts, or whatever it is y'all do.

Blogging will resume.

Last post before Christmas, kids. Let's see whom I can piss off.

* I just bought a Dell. Quite frankly, that hurts. I tried putting together my own machine, and found out that not only is it cheaper to have Dell put together the thing for me, it is much cheaper to have Dell put it together for me.

Some back story: Aw, heck, forget it. No back story. I declared war on Dell back in 1997 or 1998, I forget which. When I bought laptops, I went Compaq. When I went desktops, I went self-built. But my friend Jimmy loaned me his laptop, and while it's good, I feel lousy for using it. And the CD player broke. Sorry, Jimmy. I'll buy you a new CD ROM soon.

So basically, the enemy just took the gates of my capital city.

* I am soooooo looking forward to the 2004 campaign.

* I am coming to the slow, inevitable conclusion that the 19th Amendment was a mistake. Indeed, in my most misogynistic (let's be honest, misanthropic) moments, I think we should restrict the vote to landed men over the age of 25. (If you think this is racist, you haven't spent much time outside of cities.)

I'm fighting this conclusion, but the evidence is compelling:

Since the passage of the 19th, here are a few examples of the damage done to our nation:

(1) The Democrats, adopting in milder form many of the platforms of the Socialist parties of Europe, became a viable party again.

(2) FDR elected, making (1) worse.

(3) JFK elected, making (2) worse.

(4) LBJ elected, making (3) worse.

(5) (Anyone else see a problem with Presidents with three easy initials, by which they are commonly known?)

(6) Following from (2)-(4), Roe v. Wade. Current death toll: ~31 million children dead.

(7) Following from that, boy births are more common than girl births for the first time ever. So not only have women voters helped slaughter kids, but they've inadvertantly declared war on their own sex.

(8) Accepted expansion of the State well beyond its Constitutional limitations, so single women and widows can feel safer. The rest of us can choke.

Just something to think about. Doubtless, my wife will beat me for this.

I should add (but not hasten to add!) that I recognize the inherent unfairness in knocking somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the population of the voting rolls, especially in a country founded on the link between governance and representation. I will be the first to admit that this is not the nicest thing I've ever said, is decidedly not Christian, and I'll probably repent of it later. But it's been working at me for a while.

* Can we all agree that Howard Brush Dean III is kinda funny looking? Long arms, big belly, stumpy neck.

* See that big space at the top of my blog? You're looking at why I'll be switching over to Movable Type some time in the next year.

* I think my profession is destroying our society.

* I think the French will launch a genocide within fifteen years. I just wonder if they'll win.

* Hillary Clinton is a miserable failure.

* Jimmy Carter lick ass.

* I've had doubts about Arnold Kling's mental rigor; that said, this is a respectable, if wrong, opinion. It assumes that the broad middle of American society is irrationally apathetic; that demagoguery was somehow less a danger when the Constitutional limitations on government were stronger (thus overlooking, at a glance, the years 1815-1823, 1850-1861, 1876-1918, the entire career of Huey Long, and the history of the Democrat party); and that the will of a few determined individuals is somehow more effective on the polity than it was before the Internet. I'll be the first to admit that the transactional costs of organization have decreased; but I'm yet to be convinced that the decrease is so substantial that the additional energy will translate into quantitative electoral differences.

Now, I think demagoguery might very well be a great danger, but for the following reasons:

* More women vote.
* More voters have passed through college, and are therefore stupider than at any equivalent time in the past.
* More men without a physical stake in society, i.e., without real property, vote.
* The media is polarizing, and providing more deliberately ideologically discreet information than ever before.
* The "blogosphere" is such a tiny sliver of the electorate that the moderation that comes from being exposed, directly and openly, to one's ideological opponents, is not well-shared enough to have any effect countering the trends toward polarization.
* Will and Grace is still on the air.
* Alec Baldwin lick ass. Sorry, couldn't resist.
* We are at a stage of true ideological clash between left and right; it has been about seventy, no, ninety years since anyone could say that.

Time will tell.

* I'm late on this, but I've been swamped: Happy Chanukah to any Jewish readers I have.

* I watched my side of the spectrum go loony during the Clinton years; but I never saw anything like what's happening to the Left now. Y'all are nuts, kids. Seek help.

* Following from my second point, the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Twenty-Second Amendments were mistakes.

* At some point, inferring the opinion of the entire Magisterium from the loud-mouth remarks of a single Cardinal is a signal that you're either (a) lazy (b) stupid (c) intellectually sloppy and/or (d) anti-Catholic.

* I wonder: If everyone who hates Evangelicals actually met one, would I still have to put up with utterly nauseating, vacuous references to the "religious right"?

* Paul Cella is wasted in his day job.

* Merry Christmas to all.

"I shouldn't take it personally. Because what (the Bush) administration was attempting to do was turn back the progress of the entire 20th century. They were not just after Bill Clinton - they wanted to undo Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt," Clinton said.

"They were on their way to Teddy Roosevelt. It was a bipartisan right-wing extreme agenda," she said.

You say that like it's a bad thing, Ms. Clinton.

I was wondering why the loons who give out the Nobel were swooning over a woman who spends her time saying bad things about the Iranian government.

Turns out it's because she hates the U.S.

Silly me.

So it appears that we are, indeed, bickering over the price.

Political speech is the right to call your opponent a dirty son of a bitch. We just lost that right, temporarily.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Maggie Gallagher, a thousand times the advocate I'll ever be.

Could it be? A Catholic Bishop with a spine?

Miracles happen, kids.

Can't see anything wrong with this. I know, I'm supposed to think Coulter's a lousy polemecist, but this bit:

Is there nothing five justices on the Supreme Court could proclaim that would finally lead a president to say: I refuse to pretend this is a legitimate ruling. Either the answer is no, and we are already living under a judicial dictatorship, or the answer is yes, and – as Churchill said – we're just bickering over the price.

Is pretty much dead-to-rights.

New link coming, because of this post. Boys, I know when I'm outclassed, and this fellow leaves me outclassed. I've eviscerated Lithwick in my time, but this is simply gorgeous.

And this simply confirms many of my pre-existing theories about PBS. If you're stuck with the Palestinian Broadcasting Service for a while -- as I was -- you learn that with the exception of some children's programming, Ken Burns, a few documentaries, some Nova programming, and British comedies, you have drek.

Andrew Sullivan says something unequivocally bad about abortion! It can be done!

Technophobes of the world, UNITE!

Just for the information of all the vaguely anti-religious folks out there, most of us like science, and its results. What we don't like is the sacrifice of human life for anything other than highly specific self-defense.

Gone for a week, kids. I'm posting over at Ben's place (I think he thinks I'm doing him a favor, when the reverse is quite clearly true). Wander over, and happy Thanksgiving.

In other news, Democrats unwilling to commit political suicide.

It's gonna get wild, y'all. Keep your mind on your riches, baby. Keep your mind on your riches.

UPDATE: Or maybe they are. Attacking the AARP is either brilliant or utterly insane for these guys. Who else is with me in voting the latter?

Let's get this out in the open: Joe Lieberman is not a serious candidate for the Democrat nod. He's way too likely to think before opening his mouth.

Dear Orrin and Ben:

I really hate to say this, but: Told ya so.

Donkeys in Louisiana have a time-honored tradition: Around noon on election day, they figure out how many votes they need; then, before the polls close, they produce them. Somehow. Certainly not illegally.

Sorry, guys. I was pulling for him, too.

Best regards,

T.

And Tacitus actually reads this trash.

I don't know whether to pity him or admire him.