HITCH WATCH: Back at it again on Slate on how this war is different... speaking of... when did they displace National Review Online as the thing you absolutely have to read seven different pieces from everyday?
"When a man thinks that any stick will do, said Chesterton, he is likely to pick up a boomerang. Shall we inquire into the "armchair" or otherwise sedentary lives of those who sympathized with Milosevic, or who published euphemisms about al-Qaida, or who went on fatuous hospitality trips to Baghdad and ended up echoing Baathist propaganda? You can be sure that they would yell about "the politics of personal destruction" or perhaps "McCarthyism" if such an imputation was made. Well, then, let them beware of licensing such a cheap form of ad hominem argument. Just as some of the greatest anti-war writers and poets were courageous soldiers, some of the best minds of World War II were civilian strategists and code-breakers, and some of the finest Resistance fighters were intellectuals who picked up weapons. There is no certain way of enforcing these distinctions morally, until the test actually comes. But now civilians are in the front line as never before, and we shall be needing a more rigorous terminology to reflect that dramatic fact."
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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