Count us among those Americans who believe Senator Joseph Lieberman is a man whose candor is matched only by the clarity and persuasiveness of his thinking.  When contrasted with the beltway voices of majoritarian Democrats who, for transparently political reasons, are so invested in defeat in Iraq, we are perplexed why so many Americans are apparently oblivious to his reasoning.

Mr. Lieberman's piece in today's Washington Post provides needed balance to our options in Iraq and argues that General Petraeus is making modest progress which will allow the political solution to take root.  He concurrently argues that were we to leave prematurely, al-Qaeda in Iraq would not pack their bags and disappear over the horizon.  For them, Iraq is the central front in their war with the West and a kind of savage proving ground for their capacity to replicate their barbarity in other susceptible nations.

As Mr. Lieberman states:

That is why the suggestion that we can fight al-Qaeda and stay out of Iraq's "civil war" is specious, since the very crux of al-Qaeda's strategy in Iraq has been to try to provoke a civil war.

For those who fail to see the link between the war in Iraq and the broader war against Islamic extremism, we turn to Victor Davis Hanson, who begins by providing us with a catalog of authoritative pundits and former U.S. leaders, all of whom believe the "war on terror" has been exaggerated, distorted, or misconstrued, for a variety of parochial motivations.

Mr. Hanson then makes the case that those determined to reclassify Islamic terrorism to a level of lesser lethality will imperil the entire hemisphere.  That he is a military historian and classicist makes him eminently qualified to speak with authority on divining the kind of evil intentions in the Islamist extremists as we failed to do for Hitler in 1936.  Our belated discovery that Herr Hitler always intended to honor his pledge to eliminate the Jews resulted in the loss of about 40 million souls.

Since the Democrats have showcased an adamant ignorance in their demands for a withdrawal timetable, insisting they are merely responding to the "American people" who are understandably disheartened by the continued violence in Iraq, we can expect them to continue their crusade of defeat right up to the 2008 elections.

That's a political gambit that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently stated he is pleased to make.  But what if that results in Iraq being turned into a permanent training camp for al-Qaeda?

Because virtual reality scenarios can't be run to defend or criticize contentious issues such as the war in Iraq, we can never know the outcome of the alternative strategies that weren't pursued.  That's why the most credible arguments hedge their rhetoric because strategic omniscience is something of an oxymoron.

That wisdom seems to have eluded former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, whose editorial in the New York Daily News raises intellectual arrogance to unprecedented levels.  He makes the twofold argument that the U.S.'s premature withdrawal from Iraq would not increase the risk of a homeland attack by radical Islamists and that our presence in Iraq has given al-Qaeda "a second chance and the best recruiting tool possible."

Mr. Clarke's argument is at once the most reliable litmus test for political candor and a faithful reflection of the left's obtuse understanding of our 25 year undeclared war with Islamic extremism.  First, it's a sign of political insecurity when we resort to exploiting the elasticity of an argument--that our presence in Iraq has spawned more terrorists--when the counter-argument--that the threat of Islamic extremism is just as pernicious, regardless of whether or not we invaded Iraq--is impossible to demonstrate.  That, in fact, drawing them into the shooting gallery of Iraq is the preferred method of killing them.

Indeed, the strength of the argument that we've abetted Islamic recruiting efforts is largely a matter of academic speculation--which the left can't resist for its potential to advance their political standing--because we're there. That, in turn, is related to the first point:  That is, for the past two plus decades the U.S. hasn't incited Islamic radicals--unless our mere existence has incited them, and that's a credible argument--yet since the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 our nation and its interests have been attacked dozens of times.

Further, Mr. Clarke's summary--and wholly undemonstrable--statement that "If not for this administration's reckless steps to push America into war" our risk of a homeland attack would be significantly lower, is belied by al-Qaeda's long-standing intentions to decimate the West in general and America specifically.  In fact, it's arguable that we've not been attacked in largely because of our counter-terrorism efforts.

In truth, the counter-argument, which is encapsulated in the Latin phrase, Principiis Obsta, convincingly argues that the outcome of wars are determined by the side that most aggressively pursues its opposition at the first sign of aggression.  That, in contemporary parlance, is a strong argument for the strategy of pre-emption--and that, Mr. Clarke's effete arguments notwithstanding, is precisely what President Bush is doing.

It's rare that a liberal Leviathon such as George McGovern would rise to defend one of the most discredited legacies in U.S. political history, but his editorial in today's L.A. Times reaffirms the notion that spearheading the defense of one's own performance is the least reliable route to an acquittal..

If you have the intellectual courage to slog through Mr. McGovern's thoroughly biased review of one of the truly regrettable chapters in our history, you'll learn that his "platform offered a balanced budget.  I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it."  The method of paying for it was, of course, thinly veiled tax increases on the "rich."

He also tells us that he opposed the Vietnam war, as he does the war in Iraq, because "these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security."  Really.  As we have argued--along with a legion of military historians--Vietnam was a categorically winnable war, one in which a civilian leadership was whipped into submission by the hard left wing of the Democratic Party--sound familiar?

We segue to Iraq, a war whose unpopularity is matched only by the craven way in which the politics surrounding it have warped public opinion about it, which is a kind of media chicken-and-egg phenomenon.  Readers will be challenged to find a war in U.S. history where the legislative branch has been so intimately involved at the strategic and tactical level as have the Democrats.

It's an unseemly spectacle to witness people spouting off on subjects where their expertise is, to put it kindly, suboptimal.  Indeed, whether it's Al Gore speaking fervently about the disaster about to befall us unless we radically change our way of life or Senator Reid sternly admonishing President Bush that General Petraeus' strategic correction has failed, we are obliged to fundamentally handicap every utterance from the left lest we begin to unwittingly take them seriously.

So as we read that Mr. McGovern believes this administration has repeatedly violated the Constitution and federal statutes, and chastises Vice President Cheney for criticizing Speaker Pelosi's trip to Syria--arguing that it was no different than President Nixon meeting with the Chinese--we can only shake our heads in utter amazement that his advanced years haven't brought this inveterate liberal even a modicum of wisdom.

Alas, the same can be said for his intellectual offspring currently charged with the leadership of his party.

We all know that the filter through which we perceive the world can taint and bias the content we ultimately receive.  At its most basic level, human understanding is predicated on that and it circumscribes our knowledge in ways that can make us act in ways not entirely in our own best interest.

That takes us to Doug Shoen's piece in today's Boston Globe that makes a credible case that the Democrats are tacking too hard to the left in their confrontations with President Bush, and are thereby jeopardizing their 2008 electoral chances.  He reviews some salient examples of clashes between the Executive and Legislative branches, and draws the unavoidable conclusions that in most instances the former prevails.

Paramount in these battles is understanding which argument resonates with the electorate, which one seems forthright and which may seem craven or cynical.  Although most Americans may not have an encyclopedic command of world events, they do have an intuitive sense that detects political candor, or its opposite, a malign motivation. 

As Mr. Schoen notes, if the Democrats remain intransigent and refuse to present Mr. Bush with what he called a "clean" supplemental funding bill, their electoral hopes will be in peril.  He closes his argument with the curious assertion that "The best chance to end the war is to make sure the next president is a Democrat."

Note that he didn't write "The best chance to win the war...".  Ending wars is as easy as losing a log-rolling contest but far more consequential.  In truth, the word "end" is just a transparent euphemism for "withdrawal," which is a cousin of the cowardly option called "surrender." 

No one with his head above the sand can argue that the prosecution of this war has been anything but flawed, but you would also be hard-pressed to find a military historian who wouldn't tell you that that many, perhaps most, wars fall into that category.  Indeed, there are entire books dedicated to the blunders of last century's two major wars, and as you read them you marvel at the strategic and tactical stupidity on display, unless you analyze them through contemporaneous eyes. 

Then the unique challenges of ambiguous intelligence, imperfect communication, broken supply lines, all the way down to the weather, relegate our imperious notions of the "perfect war" to the world of fantasy where they belong.

So, we're left in the same unenviable position that civilian leaders and military commanders have been in for time immemorial, and their lessons provide cold comfort to our current predicament because although some are applicable, so many are not.

Undermining the troops in the field with cynical legislation will not only imperil their lives it will cast the Democrats in a dark and despicable light that will haunt them right up to the next election.  It will be instructive to see whether they  have the sense of self-preservation to correct course, or whether they choose to willfully stare down the president.

If it's the latter, we can probably add this episode to the list of political battles where the Executive branch has prevailed, and chalk it up to another example of the pitfalls of political hubris.

There was no evidence of intended irony in Eleanor Clift's editorial in Newsweek which began by juxtaposing the murders at Virgina Tech with the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision upholding the ban against partial-birth abortions.  If nothing else, that unsurprising oversight reflects the degree to which we've culturally objectified the 48 million innocent unborn humans that were murdered in the womb. 

The secondary irony, again doubtlessly lost on the likes of Clift, is that it was women who decried the abhorrent objectification of themselve as "sex objects."  They were, of course, correct, but the fact that their complaint has been selectively applied over the years betrays the political nature of its motivation. 

Whether we contemplate people in objective or conceptual terms, either is the first step towards the justification to deny them their human rights.  That is the primary reflex that rendered the destruction of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany  acceptable--they  were convinced  that they were less than human.  Curious in the Supreme Court's decision was Justice  Kennedy's justification for his vote that tipped the court:  To wit, that to prevent the killing of a human when he or she is so very close to being born is not an abridgment of the mother's rights.

Although that argument has credibility, it is predicated on one of the least flattering characteristics of human beings:  That is, we have the ability to make moral judgments that stipulate a nearly infinite number of degrees of truth.  Is a 4 month fetus any less human than one about to be born?  If you think it is, ask any woman who has seen her fetus on an ultrasound screen as she welled up with anticipatory pride and love and you will convinced otherwise.

Against that polemical backdrop, the Court's decision is a major milestone in the cultural war that is tectonically redefining the unborn as fully human, deserving of the same Constitutional protections that we all enjoy.  Hanging in the moral balance are the rights of the mother which can be neither ignored nor denied.  In the first trimester of a pregnancy the argument to abort based on a serious health risk is far more defensible.  But as you approach the 9th month, when a Cesarean section is typically a viable alternative, that argument becomes suspect.

All of this is to say that we've finally advanced to the point in this debate that begins with a broad consensus that unborn fetuses are, in fact, human beings, but that was not always the case.  Now that we've achieved that moral marker we can begin to reverse engineer the argument that leads to the definition of the role of human sexuality.  That is human sexuality, as is tacitly argued in contemporary cultural parlance, merely a tool of self-gratification, the base exercise of power, or something to be exploited for the satisfaction of our egos?

Or is it something more profound, perhaps something even sacred, that was intended as a deep and personal expression of love, with the concurrent intention of creating new life?  If so, we might consider returning to the times when the marital process began with a lengthy courtship, an expressed sanction by the father of prospective bridegroom, and an abiding understanding by young man and woman of the value of postponing sexual activity until marriage.

It will take time, perhaps decades, but the Court's decision clarifies that we're on a trajectory that may one day result in a more serious appraisal of the moral dimensions of human sexuality--something largely conspicuous by its absence in contemporary society.

Due to its inadvertent acquital of liberalism's blinkered approach to public policy, a letter in the Colorado Springs Gazette could not go unchallenged. 

The letter essentially argued that we must allow young students to be fully educated concerning all aspects of human sexuality, including the full range of so-called "reproductive rights" and birth control techniques that have allowed us to enjoy their sexual Garden of Eden--gratification sans responsibility--or so the myth goes.

Below is ClearCommentary's reply:

To the editor:

Kjersten Foresth’s letter might be the perfect prototype to demonstrate the folly of liberalism, which leaves an expansive wake of pernicious downstream problems, from the explosion of teenage pregnancies as a result of their self-absorbed abdication of traditional values to the intergenerational transfer of poverty spawned by misguided welfare programs (“Students need many options to prevent disease,” Letters, Apr. 19).

They began with the abrogation of the lessons learned in the crucible of 2000 years of recorded history, from the vastly superior family construct of a man and a woman to such currently quaint—and apparently expendable--ideas as postponing sexual activity until marriage.  Using those post-modern conventions as a template, they constructed a radical set of precepts whose only absolute is a blind adherence to moral relativism.  Then, when we gaze upon the noxious results, from the unprecedented rates of teenage pregnancies (which effectively consign them and their children to lives of poverty) to the pauperization of inner-city minorities, they demand new and costly programs to redress their self-generated ills.

Their successful abolition of absolutes has clearly resulted in the cultural anarchy so much in evidence today, most notably in a newly minted generation that has been trained to reject the principles and values that have been faithfully transferred to successive generations for centuries.  The most conspicuous example of this is the episodic spate of school murders by profoundly confused and angry students, most recently the barbaric murders at Virginia Tech.

Since guns have always been in abundance in America, and since these anomalic tragedies are a recent phenomenon, liberals must ask themselves what has changed?  The only credible answer is our culture, whose most prominent feature is an unyielding ignorance about the most effective way to raise and educate children, which has been enthusiastically championed by liberals.

As is often the case in profound atrocities such as that in Virginia on Monday, the cultural aftershocks are beginning to register.  We now hear that mass murderer, Cho, may have had a mental illness to which authorities may not have appropriately responded.  That he was a loner with a long list of festering hatreds is perhaps all we truly know.

But as we begin to perform the cultural forensics, something else is becoming apparent, and that is how we've become inured to the disproportionate response by people who harbor internal demons.  Low on the seismic scale are the outbursts prompted by excessive alcohol in response to seething gender or ethnic hatreds.  On the other end of the scale are the grotesque expressions of a person wholly consumed by anger, which, of course, is what our nation witnessed at Virginia Tech.

As we peel the layers of meaning back in a desperate search for a cause, we might consider the way in which our historical cultural consensus has been transformed into anarchy.  As quaint as it would appear to many--which is only evidence of how far we've deviated--there was a time when children were inculcated with the expectation that it was incumbent upon them to assimilate into society.  That their internal demons weren't, in fact, unique, and that part of growing into an adult obliges us to reconcile values and beliefs that are manifestly at odds with the rest of the world.

The iconoclasm that was birthed during the 60s categorically rejected such notions as the product of an oppressive culture tacitly controlled by white cultural elitists bent upon maintaining their authoritarianism at any cost.  In that argument, God was merely one of many mechanisms exploited to leverage desired behavior and to stifle freedom of thought.  Their newly coined mantra might be aptly characterized by the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche:  "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

The result is that our public discourse has become coarsened, informed by the new rule that unexpressed thoughts are unhealthy, that every imagined right is a de facto right and any prohibition against its robust expression is nothing more than a societal convention born out of an obsolete set of patriarchal precepts.

Therefore, when someone has an unrequited grudge against real or imagined foes, he has been effectively enabled to have it heard in the court of his own choosing, be it on one of several television shows that are magnets for the bizarre or, in the extreme case, in savage, violent acts.

Our only hope to extricate ourselves from this self-wrought cultural maze is to reaffirm that there are, in fact, rules and guidelines to our public lives, and that we lose nothing by restraining our baser instincts--that, in truth, much is to be gained by doing so, in terms of beginning to understand the virtues of self-discipline and the value of delayed gratification.

Those lessons, originally taught by such brilliant, timeless minds as Aristotle and Socrates, are readily available, if only we have the wisdom to pursue them.

As the emotional ashes of the mass murder at Virginia Tech begin to settle, it's vital that we achieve a balanced context and perspective, both of which are compromised by Richard Cohen's piece in today's Washington Post. 

Whether intentional or not, Mr. Cohen conflates madness and various shades of violent outrage, as well as its more calculated offspring, the desire for regional or global domination.  Indeed, he threads into his argument not only Cho Seung Hui, the man responsible for Monday's slaughter in Virginia, but Hitler, Pol Pot, and Iran's Ahmadinejad.  His argument, which lacks both substance and insight, is that our Founding Fathers now "stand corrected" because the Second Amendment was written in "a different time when madmen could do limited damage."

But Mr. Cohen predictably only invokes one side of the argument, the one that renders plausible his case that because perpetrators of evil exist we should deny them access to the tools to murder--be they handguns or nuclear weapons.  The other side of the Founding Fathers' rationale for the Second Amendment, and one that is far more profound is their implied understanding of the universal right of self-defense.

You see, if we proscribe either handguns or nuclear weapons, in the case of the former for law-abiding citizens and the latter, for law-abiding nations, only criminals and rogue nations will have guns and nuclear weapons.

Moreover, what Mr. Cohen calls "madmen" are really people with incandescent anger but enough sense to plot the murder of those they are convinced are to blame, be it Hitler's Jews or Cho's fellow students and professors.  By labeling them madmen he has rendered the arguments for confiscatory gun laws--or denuclearization--far more plausible than deserved.

Indeed, as his editorial meanders along a somewhat convoluted line of reasoning in the last couple paragraphs, he fails to bridge the logic gap in his overarching argument:  To wit, whether it's Hitler or Stalin, or, on a more mundane but nonetheless bloody level, Cho, the only credible way to stop them is an instant and massive counter-response and that is only possible if--in his parlance--the non-madmen of the world have access to weapons.

So, as we mourn the heart-wrenching loss of those young innocent lives and ponder their families' acute pain, we should refrain from hyperbolic arguments that invoke notions of madmen and simply recognize that evil men have always existed and always will, and that the most effective way to stop them is at the first sign of aggression.

The sheer magnitude of yesterday's carnage at Virginia Tech university guarantees not just that it will elicit a nationwide period of prayerful mourning but that the media will exploit its incredible potential for advancing its own agenda.  Gerard Baker, writing in the TimesOnLine, begins the discussion with a distorted characterization that would convince us that school related gun deaths are common, that, indeed, America has a culture that breeds these kinds of atrocities.

Since he hails from Great Britain he must provide the obligatory astonishment of America's "gun culture that foreigners find so hard to understand."  Perhaps Mr. Baker should turn his analytical eye inward and question why Europeans believe that being unarmed increases their security?  As the bumper sticker goes, "Criminals prefer unarmed victims."

Beyond the love of our freedoms inherent in our Bill of Rights, Americans seem to intuitively understand that criminals will always find ways to obtain guns.  That even in places like Washington, D.C., which has the most stringent gun laws in the nation, criminals intent upon getting weapons do so quite easily.  And, on the other side of the ledger, for states that have instituted concealed carry permits for law-abiding citizens, violent crime was reduced an average of 8 percent in the first year.

As any responsible analysis must, we turn next to the New York Times and to an editorial that begins by observing that guns in America are "frighteningly easy to obtain" and ends with a call for "stronger controls over lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss."

Predictably living up to its reputation for blaming guns for violent crime, the Times is also renowned for never asking the kind of question that truly challenges its smug orthodoxy:  To wit, what if students who were trained in the use of firearms were allowed to carry concealed weapons?  It's quite possible that the murderer might have been shot dead after the first two students were killed.

Since they are reliable propagandists in perpetuating the myth that confiscatory gun laws make us safer, we should never expect the kind of brutal soul-searching analysis that might undermine their campaign for a gun free America.

Therefore, as the mainstream media asks the probing questions about why the police didn't lock-down the campus and issues their reflexive calls for more Draconian gun laws, sensible Americans recognize that evil is timeless and that no level of governmental intervention can eliminate the risk of violent crime.  That, indeed, taking the right to defend ourselves and property seriously by being trained in the use of firearms is the most reliable method of safeguarding ourselves and families.

All across America we have seen a growing list of examples highlighting an inversion of traditional values.  Michael Barone performs a valuable service by cataloging them and providing editorial footnotes concerning the uniquely injurious way in which the left has undermined the implied consensus of understanding that historically informed our nation.

From the Duke rape case to the double standard that was brazenly applied to Don Imus to PBS' rejection of Frank Gaffney's film about moderate Muslims who confront radical Islamists, we can be excused for collectively shaking our heads in shock and dismay.

After you review Mr. Barone's litany of irrefutable exhibits of base stupidity and calculated cynicism, ponder what lies beneath the motivation of those who champion these double standards as well as their agenda that is so clearly antagonistic to America's future.  At the core is both a moral confusion and an attitude that willfully dismisses anything that hints of American exceptionalism. 

The former is a symptom of a nascent inability to make functional distinctions between good and evil predicated on the misguided notion that all nations have an inherent worthiness--witness the left's insistence that we "talk" to Syria and Iran.  The latter is a cultural relic of the post-modern world of the 60s in which an entire generation became convinced that America is guilty of global arrogance and rank imperialism, and that our system of governance is no better than the thugocracies that populate the United Nations. 

Indeed, they have carefully culled every example of good will and global magnanimity--of which there are too many to enumerate--from our history to make the case that the U.S. is a pariah unworthy of its titular status as the world's uncontested superpower.  It's all about inverting our traditional understanding of victims and oppressors:  In the view of many Democrats the former are inherently worthy and the latter worthy only of vilification.

All of this seeps down into the domestic issues we've recently faced, such as the Duke rape case where race baiters such as Al Sharpton remain unrepentant despite the fact that the entire case has been exposed as a fraud.  Yet we never hear Mr. Sharpton criticizing the fact that although blacks constitute 24 percent of New York City residents they are responsible for over 60 percent of its violent crime.

As the Democrats plot their way to realizing their dream of increasing their Congressional majorities and taking the White House--all which are predicated on losing the war in Iraq--we can only pray that our efforts to degrade the Islamic radicals are adequate to prevent another horrible attack on our soil. 

By making heros of victims and categorically demonizing traditional values as oppressive, authoritarian, and, of course, racist, the left has worked tirelessly to bring the Goliath of America to its knees--and it might just succeed.

It can be argued that raising taxes comes as naturally to Democrats as flight to birds because the evidence for it is no less obvious.  Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, who campaigned as a moderate Democrat with a willingness to learn the virtues of fiscal austerity, has disabused critics and supports alike that he intends to honor that pledge.

The lead editorial in today's Colorado Springs Gazette reviews the governor's ingenious plan to raise taxes by exploiting the state's TABOR law, which is the Taxpayers Bill of Rights.  Among other revolutionary features, the law requires mill levy rate reductions under certain revenue conditions, and Mr. Ritter's plan was to freeze the rates and retain the excess revenues.  Only when glimpsed through the kaleidoscopic lens of liberalism is that not a tax increase, but he and many in his party are making that assertion, miraculously, while keeping a straight face.

Since that initiative foundered, the governor has rekindled his plan by allowing mill levy reductions in some districts and freezing them in others--call it a quasi-freeze.  But, what sensible taxpayers should take away from this unseemly display is that the governor's addiction to tax increases hasn't been cured.

When Referendum C passed by a narrow margin nearly two years ago it was billed as a desperately needed way to fund highways and higher education, without which our quality of life in Colorado would suffer irreparable damage.  Fiscal discipline has never been a hallmark of the modern Democratic sensibility because their primary raison d'etre is to build political coalitions by making the electorate beholden to them.

The predicate of their motivation is a limitless appetite for a robust and ever expanding role for government in our lives, and we must stand in awe of their eloquence when they plead their case, which seems to happen no less frequently than the earth turns on its axis.  What goes largely unnoticed in this unprincipled pageantry is that with each passing year less and less of our world is exempt from the intrusion of government, because the Democrats have mastered the fine art of incrementalism in governance. 

The essence of that practice involves minute but meaningful encroachments and tax increases such that it makes the fiscal pain almost imperceptible while convincing average folks that more government is better.  A key difference between government programs and the marketplace is that the latter quickly discards programs--read businesses--that don't perform, while the former, as President Reagan astutely noted, enjoy eternity on earth.

There is, in truth, no meaningful accountability for government programs because regardless of how poorly they perform they always have a constituency that is worked into a fever by politicians at the first hint that there may even be a reduction in the increase of funding, much less the summary--and probably deserved--demise of the program entirely.

The same argument can be made for Mr. Ritter's plan for these funds, which is our public education system.  That may well be the prototypical definition of "black hole funding" because it's where a nearly endless amount of taxpayer dollars disappear and the only thing we have to show for it is poorly educated students.

Although the U.S. military rolled into Iraq with little resistance, we can stipulate that the post-invasion efforts were flawed and that they fundamentally misappraised the local geopolitical realities.  However, we must also condition our current observations with another reality and that is the fact that the Middle East will always be a critical region to American national security.

Against that backdrop we examine Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks at The Heritage Foundation, delivered yesterday.  It's a lengthy speech but one worth reading because it highlights the challenges we face and correctly assesses our lack of viable options when it comes to honoring our commitments, which is the one lesson from Vietnam many in America seem to overlook. 

Not unlike Iraq, that was a war the U.S. could have won, but for purely political reasons, it was deemed untenable to finish what we had begun.  Besides the pogrom that ensured in Cambodia, America's reputation on the national stage suffered severely, and unless Democrats step back from the canvas in Iraq we may well make the same mistake again.

It's unfortunate that so many on the left disdain Mr. Cheney because this is a speech that should be read by every American. We're at a crossroads that one day will be noted for its significance as the decision-making juncture that led either to relative stability in Iraq or an implosion that created an Islamic terrorist redoubt.

If it's the latter scenario, blame will be assessed as it was in Vietnam, and the Democrats' legacy of weakness in national security and the application of military power will be indelibly written into history.

Among the many cultural myths propagated by the left is that America, with its vastly complex system of market-based economics and virtually unlimited opportunity for achievement, is, in fact, governed by an elitist cabal of Caucasians.  Writing in the Rocky Mountain News, editorial page editor Vincent Carroll informs readers of an annual gathering in Colorado Springs of the cultural equivalent of the Flat Earth Society.

The conference is the hard left's opportunity to rehearse its litany of post-Marxist pieties that form the bulwark of its meticulously crafted play-book for ideologues of all ages.  Indeed, a perverse hallmark of this sub-genus of liberalism is its unflinching defense of a monochromatic ideology that is as intellectually seamless as it is obtuse. 

It's a world where premises are immune from challenge and conclusions thrive in a medium unencumbered by the presence of uncomfortable criticism.  So we shouldn't be surprised that in this Looking Glass world one of the central debates among these celebrants of cultural conformity is the criteria for defining victimhood and the "struggle" over who can rightfully claim victim status.

If the unseemly focus on a taxonomy of victimology strikes you as a curious rendering of contemporary American society you have achieved a level of enlightenment far surpassing the intellectually incestuous claptrap peddled at this conference.  Indeed, the predicate of victim status provides the justification for redressing perceived abuses and its purely political motivation is exposed by enumerating their proposed remedies. 

First among them is "progressivity," a term they have deftly abused to ensure its infinite elasticity in arguments for more draconian taxation of the "rich," regulations designed to proscribe behaviors they deem hostile to the environment, and a set of encyclopedic civil rights laws providing special rights their victims du jour.

It's all about externalizing the source of responsibility because they apparently inhabit a deterministic universe where the ability to make informed choices has been banned.  Further, when we make the common sense suggestion that our early choices in life have demonstrable downstream consequences, they conveniently trot out the culturally potent prop of "oppression," which is their one-size-fits-all excuse for imprudent decisions, a questionable work ethic or both.

Therefore, where most of us see opportunity they see a vast and daunting system of injustices that at once consigns people to victim status and legitimizes their anachronistic nostrums.  It's a cynical polity that both reinforces our worst instincts and suppresses our innate sense of self-determination--yet it's one they champion as the savior of Western civilization.

As we have argued in these columns, historical comparisons often provide an enlightening context to our challenges, persuasively arguing that ours is not the unique age it appears to be, that in fact, as George Bernard Shaw wrote (and borrowed from the Bible), "there is nothing new under the sun." 

Writing in the Times of London, Anatole Kaletsky reviews the last century in light of comparative technological advancements and the major wars that were fought, and makes the credible conclusion that despite our travails we have little to complain about.

Momentarily side-stepping the fact that unlike the shadowy, omnipresent foe we face in radical Islam and the fact that the conventional challenges of communism and fascism came in the form of identifiable adversaries, modern Americans will never suffer the 25 percent unemployment rates of the Depression and the ravages of Dust Bowl poverty.  Indeed, the boom and bust cycle that informed much of the early to mid-20th century has been systemically addressed such that broad-based economic woes will be part of a fading if painful memory.

That leads us to the central premise of our subject for today and that is how the lessons provided by the successive chapters of history inevitably exact a recalibration of the metrics of misery and success.  The recollections of those who lived through the horrors of World War One and the Great Depression are vivid and savage reminders that not long ago the world was far less civilized in terms of the quality of life most of its inhabitants enjoyed.

For most of us, economic insecurity is defined by the fear of credit card debt--a matter more of discipline than issues beyond our control--rather than not being able to provide food for our families. 

That stated, evil is genetically written into our identity as humans and since it can't be expunged we must find ever more sophisticated ways to deal with it.  That segues us to Thomas P.M. Barnett's book The Pentagon's New Map, which provides convincing evidence of the need to seed democratic principles--i.e., the rule of law, self-determination, respect of contracts, etc.--in regimes and nations that are susceptible to the plague of Islamic radicals. 

The collateral observation is that offensive, conventional military action will become progressively ineffective in dealing with asymmetrical threats, as is evidenced in various real and nascent hot spots.  As Frederic Bastiat, the 19th century classic liberal theorist observed, "Where goods don't cross borders, armies will."  That's somewhat simplistic, but it aptly communicates the inherent safeguards provided by a civic consensus predicated on a respect of international law and effective trade agreements.

However, because foresight is necessarily circumscribed, Mr. Kalatsky's argument can only be taken so far.  Although we're not facing the genocidal Hitler or Stalin's purges, we are facing an enemy that has sworn the destruction of the West, one which made a barbaric down payment on that promise on 9/11, as well as lesser attacks in other nations.

That argues for an aggressive policy of counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, and pre-emptive action where indicated.  Passively awaiting the next attack, which is what many Democrats are essentially supporting, is a formula for self-destruction.

We all recall former South Dakota Senator and Majority Leader Tom Daschle's bitter defeat to Senator John Thune.  Mr. Daschle brought to that campaign his rare blend of acerbic criticism and a conspicuous lack of political introspection, which Mr. Thune exploited with his equally rare mix of candor and principled approach to public policy. 

Somehow, when an erstwhile party titan is felled on the political battlefield his reputation often grows with the passage of time.  Not unlike historical analysis, the process of political appraisal is itself a highly politicized exercise and therefore Howard Fineman's piece in Newsweek, which lionizes Mr. Daschle as Senator Obama's "secret weapon," should be viewed with at least a modicum of skepticism.

Since, for the left, political connections often trump ideas, Mr. Fineman touts Mr. Dashle's close ties with Washington power brokers, which Mr. Obama has tapped for his campaign.  Although races at the presidential level must enlist every resource, Mr. Obama's nascent friendship with the former majority leader would have a more unqualified ring of prudence if it included a vibrant exchange of policy ideas. 

Indeed, while political strategy is crucial, and despite the fact that Mr. Daschle is a veteran of many a battle, Mr. Obama's real allure thus far has been the freshness of his thinking, which stands in stark contrast to the recycled Clintonisms we're hearing from Hillary.

Perhaps more than any recent Democratic presidential candidate, Mr. Obama's best chance to capture the nomination is less bound to cold calculation and early tactical decisions concerning the Iowa primary as it is in sustaining his attractiveness as a man connected to the average American by the character and integrity of his ideas.

In that regard, there is nothing that Mr. Daschle could offer him.  In fact, the South Dakotan's notoriously astringent personality and backroom tactics are something that Mr. Obama would do well to studiously avoid. 

Although he's not a household name, the former Democratic senator who Mr. Obama would do well to befriend is the Georgian, Sam Nunn.  Currently the Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Mr. Nunn was a highly respected moderate Democrat whose national security credentials were and remain impeccable.

That would bring real credibility to Senator Obama's campaign while eschewing the coy notion that his only concern is strategic intelligence, a charge easily leveled by his association with Mr. Daschle.