The Exquisite Pain of Making Everyone Agree With Me

Tony Blankley has written a humdinger of a column, headlined "Let's Organize to End War Disunity," in which he blames the following on our country's shameful "lack of unity"—military manpower shortages, John Murtha's mouth, national security-related leaks ("Only traitors or the careless would be releasing such information, as opposed to today's perhaps subjectively well-intentioned, if objectively misguided, releasers of such information," he niftily explains).

But what really got my attention was this:

If we had national unity, Congress and the president could be motivated and able to set spending priorities.

Come again? If the Democrats stopped criticizing the president's conduct in the Wars on Terror and Iraq, and the rest of us shlubs gave him a symbolic group hug, then suddenly he and the other members of the party that runs the national government would stop the whole drunken-sailor routine? I'm afraid I don't follow.

The rest of the column is a hoot, too; whether it's Blankley's assurance that he's not making "an argument against dissent," and that "it is time for convinced members of the public (including prominent figures) to organize at a much higher level than exists a broad-based, well-financed operation to try to move the better part of the American public to a unity of purpose in the face of the present danger."

What will those who solemnly accept the no-doubt heavy "burden of persuasion" teach the rest of us?

[T]he necessity for measures such as NSA-type surveillance, the extension (or even expansion) of the Patriot Act, the role of the military in domestic security, the need for a much larger active military force (and likely future conventional wars), the need to secure both the Mexican and Canadian borders, and the spending of scarce taxpayer dollars for substantially increased homeland security operations.

Don't say you haven't been warned!