Long-term observers of American public policy are understandably troubled by the way in which entitlements have become a fiscal juggernaut over the past fifty years.  Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks makes a compelling case that the trend is unlikely to change.

Using the SCHIP imbroglio as exhibit A, Mr. Brooks taps a deep cultural vein that is the very life spring of entitlements.  As you doubtless know, although its intentions were pure, the State Children's Health Insurance Program has become a pet initiative that is a kind of Valium for lawmakers as it makes them feel wonderful and absolves them of any responsibility.

Brooks provides the detail that effectively nominates this bill for boondoggle of the year but that isn't stopping the legions in Congress in desperate search of a bipartisan program they can anonymously hang their hats on without the slightest chance for a political backlash.

What happened in the past few decades is that our estimation of the proper role of government has profoundly shifted, albeit in degrees that were nearly imperceptible.  The result is that our Founding Fathers' concept of limited government was replaced by the twisted notion that every problem is the rightful charge of government.  Besides having a socialist cast to it, every time the government grows, our individual freedoms diminish, and along with it the growth that naturally accrues from mistakes.

More specifically, when we have a multi-tiered safety net the notion of risk is dumbed down and our motivation is commensurately inhibited.  In places like France where those on unemployment have a disincentive to find work, you have the ultimate civic disaster--unproductive people permanently on the public dole.

Lurking beneath this is a culture steeped in a self-referential homage that is slowly strangling its will to excel.  It's a culture that lionizes victimhood while eschewing responsibility, one that has at best a dim understanding of the pain and sacrifice our forebears suffered to sustain this great Republic.

Now, because our leaders are focused only on the next election without any consideration of returning us to civic and fiscal health, we are reduced to arguing about the merits of expanding the SCHIP and balancing it on the backs of smokers.

What a shameful legacy.

Last evening's Democratic presidential debate was clear evidence that political candor is on the ropes in America.  It's also a testimony to the daft way in which all the candidates except Senator Clinton have ceded control to the left wing of the party, because for them it's only a matter of how quickly they would withdraw from Iraq.  We begin with the inevitable infighting among the candidates as Mrs. Clinton emerges as the front-runner, and turn to Dan Balz and Anne E. Kornblut in the Washington Post. 

When presidential candidates are acting with deference and politeness you can be sure they have mastered the fine art of disguising their disdain for one another.  That won't last, but last evening's parlor room discussion confirmed that if any of the second or third tier candidates win the nomination the U.S. would be immediately withdrawing from Iraq and Iran would have unfettered access to a nuclear weapon.

That stated, even Mrs. Clinton brought a complete lack of candor to the issue of Iran.  Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard makes the case that Hillary is the only plausible Democratic candidate in the field--which is to say the one most similar to Republican front-runners.  Yet, when Tim Russert questioned her concerning a hypothetical scenario of whether Israel would be justified in attacking Iran's nuclear weapons installations, she balked--or, more precisely, she pulled a 'Clinton'.

Indeed, she returned to the same liberal intellectual redoubt of 'soft diplomacy,' the lair where both leftist doves and weasels reside, and where military action is considered a despicable oxymoron.  As Mr. Kristol argues, her vote yesterday for the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which liberal Democrats asserted was nothing less than a predicate to war, will likely haunt her as the primary heats up.  But it's her only chance to solidify herself among centrist Democrats.  The question is whether that will undermine her ability to surmount the first hurtle--the nomination.

Republican analysts are spending their late nights praying that she wins the nomination because her negatives can best be measured using a high speed computer.  She polls strongly in all the places you would imagine--large urban areas where liberalism is as protected as the gold in Fort Knox. 

But the specter of two Clintons in the White House and in our living rooms, and in particular, with Bill's smug visage staring at us for perhaps eight years, many mainstream Americans are reaching for the Tums.  That bodes well for Fred Thompson, or, for that matter, any strong Republican candidate.

That belligerents grow bolder with the acquiescence of those who can stop them is an axiom demonstrated innumerable times in history.  Indeed, the renowned 18th century English statesman, Edmund Burke, observed that "All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

After Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revealing performance at Columbia University and the United Nations, evidence of a yet unarticulated plan for dealing with him appears to be emerging.  We begin with an editorial by Michael Goodwin in the New York Daily News, which is applause for the startling but welcome speech by French president Nicolas Sarkozy.  The highlight below, which has obvious Churchillian echoes, is a stunning rebuke to appeasers, here and abroad:

There will be no peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of nuclear arms proliferation.  Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war.

After the end of the Chirac legacy, which, for a democratic state, featured a rare combination of corruption and shocking embrace of dictators, foreign affairs analysts had no reason to believe a change in leaders would herald this kind of diametrical change in policy.  For those who understand the threat Iran constitutes, Sarkozy's willingness to speak boldly is at once refreshing and reassuring.

France's tough stand against Iran stands in contrast to that of the U.S. Senate, as described by Martin Kady II in Politico.  Indeed, if one reads the speeches by Members of Parliament in pre-WWII Great Britain the same spineless sentiments can be found.

As history demonstrates, there are many ways to lose a war and many ways to expose your military to unwarranted dangers.  The former involves fundamentally misreading the enemy and our mainstream media, academics, and entertainers are excelling at downplaying the threat of radical Islam, insisting it's been spun out of thin air by the neo-cons.  The best example for the latter is WWII when the world slept as Hitler followed through with his threat issued seven years before the war began.

The fear that many on the left have expressed--i.e., that such actions as a Senate resolution condemning a terrorist organization in Iran will lead to war--is precisely why wars are lost.  You are effectively telegraphing to the enemy your reticence for confrontation, your inhibition fight, your fear of blood. 

Those who criticize President Bush for missing an opportunity to blast Iran at the United Nations might consider that he was probably taking the rope-a-dope approach:  By letting France take the lead, Merkel's Germany is far more likely to fall into line with a coalition to cement Draconian sanctions against Iran. 

Finally, people who register shock that military action against Iran might be in the offing are living in an alternate universe, one without aggression and evil.  In the real world, whether it's in business or war, there are often few options, and in many instances the only thing worse than taking the painful option is doing nothing.

That, alas, is our fate with Iran.

Many commentators, analysts, and talk-show hosts have weighed in on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, and what's most remarkable is how neatly they fit into their respective political camps.  Equally notable is how most liberal commentators and politicians are unwittingly parroting the same sentiment expressed by the apologists of Hitler and Stalin decades ago.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens cogently indicts the effete notion peddled by the left that inviting dictators and despots into a civilized educational forum is both wise and a sign of our civic beneficence.  He further correctly observes that for some entirely inexplicable reason the modern liberal sensibility fervently believe that tyrants and saints are equally susceptible to the virtues of honest dialogue.

The immediate justification offered by Lee Bollinger, Columbia's president, was the predictably idealized notion of academic freedom:

Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas--to understand the world as it is and as it might be.  Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through dialogue and reason.

What the Bollingers of the world seem to effortlessly miss is that the likes of Ahmadinejad will exploit the event to foment his followers and solidify support for his continued jihad against the United States.  Indeed, the deft polemics and studied evasion he systematically employed clarified for both the naive and ignorant among us that, regardless of our many bloody brushes with them, despots are a timeless breed that will always find a willing host.

Accommodation is the precursor to appeasement and the liberal intelligentsia of our day have convincingly demonstrated their commitment to repeating the mistakes of last century, mistakes that caused the death of dozens of millions of souls.  A damning irony is that it's the blood of those who rest in graves both here in America and worldwide that allows them to indulge their anti-war sentiments. 

Further, if America is again attacked, or if Ahmadinejad obtains a nuclear weapon and we are held hostage to his regional threats, these practitioners of pacifism and naivete will again be protected by people who truly understand the sleepless evil that threatens us. 

Perhaps at that time Bollinger and his ilk will understand that whether it's Hitler or Stalin or Ahmadinejad or Kalid Sheikh Mohammed--who recent described how he happily decapitated Daniel Pearl--these are thoroughly malevolent men who must be destroyed, and the sooner they are the fewer innocents they will murder.

It's clear that since the alleged failure of our health care delivery system is elbowing its way into every presidential candidate's platform we can expect a wide range of ideas of how best to 'repair' it.  As with all policy initiatives with a long pedigree of misgiuded motivations this one has obvious benefits:  It will present competing ideas to voters which will feature a graduated degree of government regulation and intervention, from the heavy hand of Hillary-care Redux to Guiliani's ostensibly market-based solution.

To begin, we'll take a look at Kevin Hassett's piece on Senator Clinton's nostrum in Bloomberg.com which provides a glimpse into the inner-workings of a 'New Democrat's' response to problems that were historically left for the market to resolve but are now incorrectly seen as the proper purview of government.

Something so complex as health care is inextricably interwoven with a rich pattern of cross-current political motivations.  Yet in these instances all routes lead through a treacherous landscape which naively minimizes the fact that our market-based instincts--whether it's insurance companies or consumers--are always more adroit and refined than the regulatory instinct which is blunt, inflexible, and always leaves the station behind schedule.

Clinton's plan, which is heavy on mandates and relies on government as a proxy to control behavior in pricing and service delivery protocols, perfectly characterizes the left's visceral mistrust of markets.  That's because although they are the most efficient mechanism to provide goods and services at the best cost, not unlike everything touched by the human hand, markets are inherently imperfect. 

The question is whether the goal of a program predicated on the Leviathan of government intervention, which promises a 'fairer' outcome and is rarely if ever successful, justifies the Democrats' craven political motivation to 'help Americans,' which is merely modern code for making voters dependent upon them? 

Indeed, whether it's tax increases for the 'wealthy,' confiscatory gun control, or genuflecting at the altar of transnational bodies such as the United Nations or the World Bank, it's all about expansion of control, not individual freedom.

As the health care debate evolves we would be wise to search far and wide for evidence that faithfully analyzes our current system while providing voters with examples of nations that have embraced government driven programs. 

We might also insist that the candidates--Clinton in particular--defend their implied message that health care is a right, an entitlement by birth for every American.  That, along with the Democrats' growing list of rights, is reason enough to cast a skeptical eye on their plans to satisfy a culturally driven motivation that has no Constitutional foundation whatsoever.

As a background primer, our beloved home town of Colorado Springs was recently the scene of a political battlefield that originated with its annual St. Patrick's Day parade.  The local gay coalition wanted to hitch its cause to the traditional parade to bring it unique exposure and to remind the many unconvinced among them of their goal to mainstream their cause. 

When the parade began the organizers complained to police asserting their right to limit attendees according to their own values and principles.  It became a protest scene, a kind of twisted cause celebre, and people were arrested.  It's currently tied up in local politics and since political correctness has insinuated itself even into the conservative bastion of Colorado Springs, truth and candor have been the first casualties.

But it highlights the theme of special interest injuries which has become a national industry and is further evidence--as though more were needed--of how the left has successfully Balkanized our nation.  Indeed, those with gender or ethnic grievances or petitions predicated on perceived injuries or special class status are demanding rights and entitlements, and resisting those demands requires a kind of Herculean counter-cultural force.

To demonstrate that special interest politics knows no boundaries, while on vacation here in Minnesota, we note an article in today's Worthington Daily Globe, that describes a city hall protest by Hispanics.  The group received city permission for its celebration of the Central American Independence Day celebration and, in their view were "shut down" due to complaints about noise.  Police notified organizers of the complaints but when they returned to find they hadn't moderated it, they pulled the proverbial plug.

Organizers admit they are not certain whether the response was racially motivated and that there may have been a miscommunication concerning the music they planned, but as you may imagine, they demanded our modern version of religious expiation--an apology.  After the obligatory meeting with the mayor, who declined to apologize and said his officers merely uphold the law, it was clear that at least in this southern Minnesota hamlet, political correctness hadn't found a hospitable host.

However, what is also evident is that the malaise of special interest grievances has become an entitlement and a kind of cultural recourse for any hint of bias or bigotry, real or imagined.  Against our recent immigration debate, which was as divisive as it was misunderstood, this phenomenon is a further sign of how America is slowly succumbing to the shadowy but potent forces of liberalism's cultural penumbra.

The left may argue that it's an unintended consequence, but there is no plausible way to avoid the conclusion that it's unhealthy for our civic development.  Indeed, when people fail to understand the delimited nature of our civil rights and the tacit obligation immigrants and others with a laundry list of special rights have to assimilate, and when establishment leaders begin caving to their demands, we can be assured that radical Muslims will be lining up with their own unique demands--and, as attentive observers know, it's already happening in Western Europe.

We're all familiar with such adult terms as 'commitment,' 'duty,' and 'honor.'  They are a vital kind of moral pledge we take in our personal and professional lives.  They are also a kind of touchstone of ethical veracity by which we can and should measure ourselves.  When we make a solemn commitment, it's our duty to honor it, and if we take these core principles seriously, failure is to be avoided at all costs.

It's against that backdrop that we reference an exceptionally timely and relevant piece by Michael J. O'Shea in American Thinker, which ingeniously compares the values and principles expounded by Melinda & Bill Gates with those of our Congressional leaders.  It's a gross understatement to say that under O'Shea's analytical eye the latter appear to be miserable cowards incapable of seeing beyond their parochial self-interest, which amounts to their next election.

The other theme that emerges from his editorial is how infantile their approach to the world's problems has become, in particular our daunting fight in Iraq.  Indeed, Congressional leaders in general, but the Democrats specifically, have regressed to a pre-adolescent state where the blunt pragmatics of political gamesmanship is paramount and the outmoded notion of honoring our commitment to the Iraqi people is apparently expendable.

Mr. O'shea might have added that this development is an American anomoly, because although President Lincoln suffered calumny and was ridiculed during his prosecution of the Civil War, there was an underlying consensus among elected leaders that the war must be won.  The same, of course, can be said about last century's two world wars, which were not only conflagrations on a far larger scale than Iraq but which had casualty rates in the hundreds of thousands.  Yet, our Republic was resilient, our people united, our leaders steadfast, because they understood what was at stake, and they had an abiding sense of honor and duty to uphold their commitments.

Now, our leaders have descended into the political swamp where pettiness has been raised to the level of a virtue and impugning the character of a four-star general fails to elicit a condemnation by the responsible political party.  It's beneath this great nation, a nation which birthed the likes of George Washington, John Adams, and such modern titans as Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

But there doesn't seem to be any sign that it's abating, that the adults might once again take control, that the shared goal of something greater than oneself might quiet the primordial instinct for political self-preservation and retribution.

That the majority of professors in the humanities departments of our university campuses are liberal is incontestable.  The marginal advancements made to correct that imbalance have been strenuously resisted by both professors and an entrenched administration which is as bureaucratic and inflexible as civil servants in the federal department of your choice.

Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English at Emory University, describes a predictable reaction among liberal professors in response to conservative students who have lobbied for balance in the classroom.  He informs us that Julie Kilmer, a professor at Olivet College, has penned an essay titled Reclaim Your Rights as a Liberal Educator, which is a manifesto for her fellow professors to take arms against their sea of troubles and reclaim their classrooms as their private intellectual playgrounds.

Beyond the fact that the notion of a 'liberal arts' education has become something of an oxymoron, what's more disturbing is the utter lack of candor that such professors have when it comes to their absolute lack of academic honesty.  In their hermetic, self-referential world, truth is defined with the post-modernist's stamp of approval and it's as rigid as Stalinist dogma, with one notable exception.  Defectors or rebels aren't sequestered in the gulag they're traumatized into silence with the threat of grade reduction hanging over their heads.

The quaint practice of teaching impressionable minds that ours is a history rich with ideas, innovation, challenges, and remarkable achievements in the arts and literature, has been supplanted by an intellectual smugness and startling lack of curiosity.  In that regard, studying the classics has been stigmatized and Western literature is read through the filters of feminism and anti-capitalism where race, gender, and multiculturalism trump fidelity to academic objectivity.

The result is that college graduates have a pre-set repository of information, all meticulously crafted but without any substantive foundation.  Ask a liberal arts graduate to describe the theme or import of Plato's Parable of the Cave, Aristophanes' The Clouds, or see what they can tell you about Shakespeare's King Lear or Hamlet, or, for a good laugh, have them analyze the causes of World War One or the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg.

It's a legacy that began with the effete rebellion by the left in the early 1960s and reached an unsightly fruition in the 90s.  Now it's a veritable industry, one thoroughly regimented and intellectually choreographed, and yet there is a nascent backlash among liberal professors in response to a smattering of conservative students who have had the temerity to demand a modicum of intellectual objectivity in the classroom.

That, we might surmise, is their Brave New World.

There is an obvious, if somewhat elusive distinction between merely remembering a tragic event and carefully preserving its meaning in its pristine form.  As we look back through six years of shared history, we can still vividly recall the horrors of 9/11, and the stunned disbelief we all registered as the grim reality began to set in.  However, for many, perhaps most of us, the meaning seems to have attenuated and the sense of consensual purpose then so evident appears to have fractured.

In an eloquent and poignant editorial in today's New York Daily News, Debra Burlingame, the sister of Capt. Charles Burlingame, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 which was crashed into the Pentagon, provides the raw imagery, which remains with us, but also the core message, which has suffered in the course of time.  Her message, which has the same ring of truth it did six years ago, is that we're in a war unlike any we've ever fought.  Indeed, this war is with a sleepless and shadowy malice, a seething hatred so powerful it takes delight in the merciless killing of innocents.

When confronted with this reality it's instructive to examine the differences between our two parties.  Both began with a united call to expunge this foe from the face of the earth.  However, almost immediately after the smoke from the attacks dissipated, questions concerning the cause of the radical Islamists' hatred of America began to be raised.  Readers might recall the late Susan Sontag's piece in The New Yorker, which effectively blamed American values, as well as members of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party who advanced the argument of moral and ideological equivalence between radical Islam and Christianity.  That inverted the victims and perpetrators.

Then a new phase began which originated with the civil libertarians whose mouthpiece, the ACLU, launched a propaganda campaign to convince mainstream Americans that our counter-intelligence efforts were impinging upon their right to privacy--a canard abetted by our reliably liberal media.  That ignited a firestorm of fear and a debate ensued which led to the formation of two political factions, one which believed this enemy is real and the other which believed it was the product of hyperbole.

The result reached its nadir with Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) and his recent statement that progress in Iraq would mean problems for Democrats.  That provided evidence of the reanimation of the left's post-Vietnam syndrome which amounts to a blinkered investment in military defeat and an astounding willingness to hamstring our ability to prevail.

That apparent complicity with defeat has been echoed in comments by Sens. Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, not to mention House Speaker Nancy Pilosi.  It recalls a time early in the 20th century when British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, reflecting the dismal state of collective self-esteem in England, observed that

England is, I believe, the only country in which, during a great war, eminent men write and speak as if they belonged to the enemy.

Well, the truth expressed in the old chestnut about history repeating itself appears undiminished despite the passage of an entire century, except this time the consequences are far more grave.

Another modern paradox is that although there is wide agreement that democracies are least likely among nations to wage war, the Wilsonian goal of exporting those values to susceptible countries no longer resonates with many Democrats.  To highlight that this goal has a long pedigree, we look to another Englishman, Lord Palmerston, who, in 1848, stated the following:

I hold that the real policy of England, is to be the champion of justice and right...not becoming the Quixote of the world, but giving the weight of her moral sanction and support wherever she thinks justice is, and wherever she thinks that wrong has been done.

If that recalls the neo-conservative instinct of many in the Bush Administration and their efforts to cross-pollinate the principles of democracy into Iraq, it's healthy reminder of the timelessness of those principles.

On the sixth anniversary of the gruesome attacks of 9/11, we link to one of the best sites that provides a plethora of detail concerning the victims.  As you click on various names, gaze into the pictures and imagine their lives, lives that were brutally ended on that day, remember that wars are only won when the enemy's political will is lost.

That will happen one day.  The question is whether it's their will that crumbles or ours?

An important and routinely overlooked fact in the debate concerning the war against radical Islam is that in the minds of the aggressors its roots date to the 1970s.  Indeed, the tectonic surge of anti-American Islamic extremism was evident well before the Iranian revolution, despite the fact that the attacks against the U.S. and its interests were initially sporadic.  The problem is that until 9/11, no one inside the intelligence community understood precisely how lethal and prevalent it had become.

It's against that backdrop that we examine Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton's op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post.  They begin by re-asking the effectively unuseful question about whether we're safe or safe enough, which only underscores how naivete can inhibit the prosecution of this war against radical Islam.  We have very poor metrics for determining whether we're "truly safe," or "marginally safe," because although President Bush has done everything politically feasible to protect us, all we can say with absolute certainty is that the U.S. hasn't been attacked again since 9/11.

However, a recent National Intelligence Estimate report clarifies that al-Qaeda remains determined to launch a major attack against America and CIA director Hayden echoed that assessment just this week.  Pragmatically, that means we must continue to exploit every opportunity to stay a step ahead of this barbarous foe, which includes the ability to use electronic surveillance in a timely manner and holding enemy combatants indefinitely, both of which these editorialists oppose.

They further highlight a remarkably obtuse analysis of this threat by fundamentally misunderstanding its history and evolution, which always leads to the apparently alarming conclusion that our actions in Iraq have abetted the enemy and encouraged recruits.  To wit, Messrs. Kean and Hamilton resubmit former defense secretary Rumsfeld's leaked memorandum which asked whether we were degrading the enemy faster than they were recruiting them, and predictably answered "No."  Indeed, they believe that our actions have contributed to the rising tide of radical Islamism.

Let's take their veneer-thin analysis a bit deeper.  Military historians will tell you that the earlier you confront a nascent belligerent the greater your chances are to prevail and the fewer casualties you will sustain.  Given our revelation on 9/11 that this war had been decades in the making, when we joined it in 2002 with our invasion of Afghanistan it was at a time when the enemy believed they could easily prevail.

Indeed, the evidence shows that al-Qaeda was convinced that America was a 'paper tiger,' an observation made by Osama bin-Laden himself after our shameful withdrawal from Somalia.  Now that President Bush has spent several years prosecuting both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the broader war against radical Islam worldwide, a sense of strategic desperation in this enemy has set in.

Although you wouldn't know it listening to Sens. Reid, Durbin, and Feinstein, the only thing that matters in war is winning.  Listening to them over the past few weeks you would have to conclude that we're losing, that our efforts are both futile and in vain, and that our goals of a stable Iraq are simply not worth the sacrifice.

Kean and Hamilton, both thoughtful and insightful men, suffer from a similar tendency to overanalyze our predicament when they write that

The enduring threat is not Osama bin Laden but young Muslims with no jobs and no hope, who are angry with their own governments and increasingly see the United States as an enemy of Islam.

There is in that brief analysis traces of the academic's proclivity for the kind of armchair analysis that is intellectually enticing but, to put it generously, immensely unhelpful to winning the war.  However, to momentarily indulge this exercise we might ask what those young Muslims would be doing had we not invaded Iraq?  Would they be full of hope, gainfully employed, and of no threat or consequence to America?  Of course not.

The broader response is that there was no substantive provocation for the massive attacks on 9/11 other than the fact that America exists.  We didn't seek this war but we'll finish it, despite the fact that the Democrats spend their political capital in feverish pursuit of ways to undermine it.

A city's self-image is often in conflict with how it is perceived and at times the differences are a function of self-deception.  But, in other instances it's a function of a cultural pathology that is so pervasive as to be incapable of the kind of candid introspection that provides the perspective needed to handicap its analysis.

Such is the case in the recent spate of national criticism concerning Colorado Springs.  In an article in our home town newspaper, The Gazette, we are introduced to the national perception of our city that has developed over the years.

As you'll see when you peruse it, the article is bursting with politically correct cultural elitism, and notes that

It's no secret to many city leaders that Colorado Springs is sometimes viewed nationally as intolerant, whitebread, heavily military and deeply religious.

Further down in the article the cultural Leviathan called 'diversity' rears its Hydra-head, proving that the city's real sin is its intolerable resistance to convert to the diversity creed, the left's most hallowed religion.

Well, it's probably the case that most Colorado Springs residents plead guilty to the charge that character and values are more important than ethnicity in determining the integrity of our fellow humans.  They further tend to believe that the false empowerment inherent in diversity programs is at once insulting and counter to their stated goal of cultural cohesion because it's predicated on characteristics that are the least dispositive of goodness and decency.

With respect to the quote above, the notion of 'intolerance' has been so thoroughly abused by political motivations as to have virtually no meaning whatsoever.  Indeed, if you don't subscribe to the entire opus in the liberal pantheon you are branded intolerant.  Yet the percentage of philanthropic work and charitable donations to those less fortunate in Colorado Springs is remarkable.  But because it's not funneled into the black hole of government where a convoluted web of strings are attached we're stigmatized as uncaring.

Although there are always exceptions, what we locals call "the Springs" is populated by decent, hard-working people who care about their fellow man, which in large part is driven by their Christian faith--but where, pray tell, is the sin in that?

Finally, it's also the case that the Springs is home to several military bases, but for that you will not hear even the hint of an apology.  Indeed, people who have an even cursory understanding of history know that our freedoms are the product of the blood of soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines who selflessly fought on our collective behalf, and many of whom are buried in graveyards the world over. 

One of the rare privileges of living here is seeing our uniformed military in public, and we're proud to say that we never pass them without thanking them for their service.  And, the response we typically see reflects their dedication to our great Republic, without any desire for self-recognition--they just say "You're welcome, sir."

Presidential debates are often lackluster because they have so little in common with true debating.  However, last night's Republican debate was something of a surprise in that there were unpredicted and entirely off-script exchanges which provided the kind of sub-text voters need to get a more substantive estimation of the candidates.

Mark Halperin provides some introductory score-keeping in his piece in Time, in which he analyzes each candidate's performance.  It's fascinating to read but lacks the more enduring kind of analysis that reads between the lines. 

The first tier candidates predictably stayed to script, with McCain--all but written off by Beltway pundits--turning in a strong performance marked by conviction, passion, and a true statesman-like demeanor.  Romney seemed more concerned with protecting his lead than taking risks but that's only staying true to his highly starched, somewhat wooden persona.  Guiliani was punchy but sounded repetitive in defense of his qualifications.

But there was an element of theatrical irony and tension felt in the absence of newly declared candidate Fred Thompson.  Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Amy Schatz paints a picture of the senator from Tennessee as immune from the pressures that candidates typically feel about complying with the election protocols, ignoring the timetables for announcing his candidacy, and expressing a visceral indifference to his participation in straw polls and debates.

There are, of course, pros and cons to Frank Sinatra's political equivalent of "doing it my way," but in Thompson's case he seems to pull it off because one senses he's doing it less for political calculation than for a far more novel reason--an expression of his convictions.  Indeed, when asked why he was entering the race so late he said he wasn't--they (the other candidates) entered far too early.  And, when asked on Leno's show why didn't he particpate in last night's debate he said he didn't think they were terribly informative venues for voters.

Time will tell whether he resonates with voters, but it might just be the case that mainstream Americans are looking for a president who exudes confidence and leadership sans political cynicism, doesn't apologize for projecting American values, and, of course, wants to keep our taxes low and our military strong.

Let the battle begin.

Political battles are often bloody affairs, leaving in their aftermath wounded emotions, destroyed careers, and tarnished reputations.  With the 2008 presidential election gearing up to being just such a battle royal it's productive to examine the fine art of compromise.  Since Senator Hillary Clinton has effectively sown up the Democratic nomination we'll use her as an example of compromise at its worse.

Dick Morris, writing in The Hill, drowns us with evidence supporting the charge that her assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, the senator from New York is about as likely to compromise as was Alexander the Great or Attila the Hun, take your pick.

Morris correctly observes that Clinton's notion of compromise is similar to the liberals' willingness to embrace bipartisanship only when conservative demonstrate their commitment to capitulate.  It's that utterly false sense of compromise and smarmy ability to play both sides of the equation--pretending to compromise while using every political machination to trounce the enemy--that is betrays in Clinton an unambiguous streak of ruthlessness.

The problem for principled Democrats is that she's their best shot at the White House.  So, do you settle for the Machiavellian Clinton over the neophyte but far more candid Obama.  Since oratorical verve is something to be admired, even when it's in service to political duplicity, we do stand in awe of Clinton as she weaves into her speeches just the right amount of deference for hard-core primary voters with her real agenda which is to ensure political palatability for the general election.

The question for all concerned is how she will actually govern?  If her recent speeches are any indication--and they may not be--she'll be well left of center because she strongly favors increases in marginal and corporate taxes, social safety net programs, support for the teachers unions approach to 'education reform,' and a host of other government intervention initiatives all predictably designed to purchase votes.

That, from our perspective is what is most disturbing--the reflex to "help" those in perceived need, rather than to reduce taxes and regulations to increase the chances for economic success.  It's doubly unfortunate because that political disease has found a new host in the growing number of soft Republicans, call it Compassionate Conservatism Redux.

There is ample evidence that candor and honesty are losing ground in our culture, where political expedience is the prime motivator, which leads most people to externalize the source of their problems.  We turn once again to George Will, whose piece in Newsweek ably documents the uniquely jaundiced way in which contemporary culture expresses itself.

He takes us on a short pilgrimage that covers recent national events, from the political immolation of Senator Larry Craig to the self-indulgent resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzoles, with a final stop at the linguistic contretemps of a South Carolina beauty queen, whose performance ended up on YouTube.  The inevitable, if unpleasant conclusion we must draw is that ours is a nation in a kind of moral free-fall where political opportunism, the death of humility, the absence of sacrifice, and the successful abolition of absolutes are conspiring to create an especially noxious kind of uncivilized behavior.

Beyond the rule of law and civil liberties, one of the key elements of a truly civilized society is a kind of tacit cultural consensus that provides subtle but meaningful checks on behavior.  Although there are always exceptions, that consensus tends to have an ameliorating effect on our baser instincts, from moral equivocation to outright turpitude, all of which is informed by a cultural permissiveness to have one's way with the truth.

Therein appears to be the source of much of our current cultural malaise because there is undeniable evidence that we've imprudently written that consensus out of our civic lexicon--all in the spirit of raw self-indulgence, the civic good be damned.  In that context all that matters is self-preservation and a blind adherence to a set of rights that are constantly being re-written to suite current circumstances.

That it's an ethically flawed and myopic approach to our mortal existence is both obvious and apparently of no concern because the trend appears to be expanding inter-generationally which will ensure it will thrive well into our culturally darkening future.

The cure, which we've periodically argued in favor of over the years, is seen by many as worse than the disease because it makes moral demands of us and requires decisions based on principles that rise above mere self-interest and convenience.  Yet there is no other way.

In our day and age when culture is the defining criterion of good and evil, it's a healthy exercise to ponder the principles that have provided us with the freedoms we routinely, and incorrectly, assume are both permanent and inviolable.  George Will invites us into a historical narrative at once instructive and reflective of our lost capacity to understand that evil is a concomitant of mortal life, one that must be confronted.

So dim is our apparent collective appreciation of the darkness looming over the Western world during World War Two that we've permitted political motivation to trump common sense.  Self-deception is another timeless element, and although it materializes in a variety of guises, we should be assured that history is a stern teacher which counsels us to understand that delaying a confrontation with evil is both naive and lethal.

Moreover, as time passes and the war in Iraq becomes more politically charged, the arguments against maintaining a U.S. military presence until stability has been achieved are becoming more creative and therefore less credible.  They are also laced with a remarkably resilient naivete concerning the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East, one that is both fragile and volatile. 

Indeed, should we be surprised that Iranian president Ahmadabad recently said his nation is at the ready to fill the void that a premature U.S. departure would create?  Furthermore, why is that assertion any less alarming than his previous revelations concerning his desire to eliminate Israel from the map?

In the space of one generation we've not only stigmatized the traditional values that informed and sustained civilization throughout our modern history, we've also allowed the sway of culture to dictate the strategic policies that are the best guarantor of our national security.

The sacrifices America has made in the past on behalf of nations worldwide are well known if not fully appreciated.  Our efforts in Iraq appear to be on course to join those that many in the world either diminish or fail to sufficiently credit.  Yet there is strong evidence that by providing the Iraqis the opportunity for a measure of self-determination we will not only have provided a modicum of the freedom we so cherish but will have also depreciated the chances for a theocratic hegemony to take hold in the Middle East, which is something that ought to be cause for bipartisan celebration.