How the Elites Are Destroying Civilization...

Loose Canon believes that much of the intense opposition to the war in Iraq stems from a loss of belief in the United States as a force for good in the world. The same thing happened to England. It was partly occasioned by the casualties of two world wars (in the same way that the deaths of so many young men in Vietnam affected us. As the Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last points out, however, that was not the whole story:

[A]nother important cause was the waning of confidence on the part of liberal British elites, whose pacifism evolved into anti-patriotism.

In 1933, the Oxford Union - a debating society and one of the strongholds of liberal elite opinion - held a debate on the resolution "this House will in no circumstances fight for king and country." The resolution passed. Margot Asquith, one of England's leading liberal lights, wrote that same year, quite sincerely: "There is only one way of preserving peace in the world, and getting rid of your enemy, and that is to come to some sort of agreement with him.... The greatest enemy of mankind today is hate."

This sounds so like our own elite--sentimentalists, who speak of hatred rather than challenges to freedom, and unable to confront the realities of a dangerous world. It will be far more dangerous if their view prevails.