He mitigates his conclusion in his closing paragraphs by asserting

If you accept President Bush's premise that this nation is at war with terrorism, then you have to applaud the restraint his campaign has shown so far in exploiting the attack that began that war.

Far better than criticizing his ads, ask why Bush is not calling on comfortable Americans to make any sacrifices for the war effort and why he refuses to raise the revenue to pay for what he calls a life-and-death struggle.

Those are the legitimate issues.

I think there is something to be said for both arguments, though I am going to focus mainly on the first. I am not certain how far I would push an analogy between the current political environment and that of 1944, first of all. Second, however, Democrats and liberals simply need to deal with it. Is there something unseemly in using images of 9-11 for partisan purposes? Yes. Of course there is. But this is politics. Some may say that there is something unseemly in using veteran's status, an attractive family, or inrodinate wealth to run for the presidency also. But much as me might all wish that politics could be simply struggles about ideas, it is not.

Furthermore, this is yet another debate in the political dialogue where the two sides have coalesced around an issue that in and of itself is not inherently ideological. In other words, there is no reason for Republicans to rally around the idea of the President appropriating 9-11 in his ads, or Democrats to rally against the idea any more than there were logical ideological reasons for the two sides to have coalesced around the issues in the aftermath of the 2000 election as they did. I have a sneaking suspicion that if President Gore were running for reelection and using the same sorts of ads (and is anyone going to argue with a straight face that he would not be doing so?) Republicans would be up in arms and Democrats mounting the defenses over the exact same issue, just as had the tables been turned in November 2000 both sides would have argued precisely the same as what the other side did argue.

In other words, maybe it is time to stop with the mock outrage, or at least the contrived outrage, that all adds up to a noisome hypocrisy. I know it comes as a shock to people, but both Kerry and Bush are going to try to win this election, and they are probably going to push the envelope of what the other side will call good taste. If we know this, maybe, just maybe, we can reduce the moral otrage that both sides manage to muster up at the drop of a hat. Somehow, however, I doubt that this will happen.

But this article was simply endlessly noisome. The gist of the piece: Modern boys do not know how to grow into"manliness" and instead they fit into two categories -- barbarians or wimps. I wish I could say that the argument, at its essence, is more sophisticated or nuanced or, truthfully, smart than this. Alas it is not. Indeed, Moore engages in the sort of half-baked intellectual generalizations that would be laughable were he not so dead serious about them. The whole thing reads like a caricature, albeit without the wit. He shrouds the essay in trite classical references (someone's been reading his Allan Bloom!) that tend to run toward either the jejune or else merely the pretentious. I am not sure which is worse. He makes gross generalizations the likes of which would make even the sloppiest historian blush, or so I would have thought, except at one time he taught history at Ashland University. Worse yet, he now is a principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colorado. Imagine the delight of his male students when they read the facile generalizations about them that Moore spews out with a combination of pity and disdain. Fortunately, most of them won't read Claremont Review's winter issue, so they won't have to know they are being condescended to so cravenly.

The narrative hook Moore, also a former lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, uses is the old Murphy Brown show, which caused quite a contretemps when Candace Bergen's eponymous character had a child -- gasp -- out of wedlock and Dan Quayle, well, he picked a fight with this single tv mom. Moore wonders where Avery, the fictitious boy who, if he actually existed and were a real person and such, would now be eleven.

I generally like the Claremont Review even when I disagree with it. But this article is almost transcendentally bad. Its generalizations do not hold up to scrutiny. The dichotomy he builds between barbarians and wimps would not strike most high school or college age young men as resembling any form of reality -- having coached high school kids and taught and coached their college elders over the last several years, I did not find it to ring true of a single male student-athlete I've worked with, never mind as a type that works for the bulk of them. It is sloppy. It is demeaning. (And let's not get into how it borders on homophobic.) The barbarian in me wanted to punch him in the jaw. The wimp in me wanted to weep for his profligate irresponsibility. The real person in me is merely riding a wave between pity and disgust and ridicule. Too bad Moore would not be sophisticated enough to see that person. Pity the students at his school. But bless the history students no longer under his tutelage.

I was in South Africa, and my best friend there and I had gone to Cape Town. We were visiting one of his good friends, but she was an old girlfriend, and so there was some tension. She worked in some nonprofit with close ties to government. She had this major report, due in a few days, and it was on her computer screen. Shockingly, we'd been drinking, and his friend, (name withheld), had stepped out for a bit. I suggested that in the middle of a paragraph, we simply insert"I like pork chops" and return precisely to where she had been working. David, by then tired of dealing with an ex, thought it was a capital idea. I inserted"pork chops" line. Apparently, days later, a government minister saw the report and wondered why her proclivities toward pork chops were in a report about housing. I may be going to hell, but that is damned funny stuff. But it is also a good reason why I don't want a wily fellow, even a friend (hell, I know my friends -- especially a friend) to have access to my edit button!