Very interesting commentary, and well written.

What I found most amusing, however, was this: The fading rancor that each grievance is meant to revive, of course, dates to the 1960s and the antiwar protests, urban riots and annoying youth culture that originally triggered our great turn to the right.

It wasn't that pointless, miserable war --and draft-- that triggered the anti-war protests, nor the racism and assasinations that brought about the "urban riots" (does anyone still remember the Kerner Commission Report?)

Ah, memories..."it all fades so quickly, like a sunny summer's day." At least we'll always have "annoying youth culture." Ask the parent of any teenager, then or now. Been there and seen the world from both sides now.

When Christopher Buckley resigns from Daddy's National Review, and comes out and endorses Obama, you gotta figure the times they have a'changed.

First, isn’t it great to read a newspaper article where you learn something? I didn’t know about the “Wave the Bloody Shirt” slogan and it’s interesting. Second, isn’t it tragic the way Vietnam still lingers in our national discourse? You have John McCain, a POW from that era, and Bill Ayers, a violent protestor.
By the way, I don’t care if Ayers is Mother Theresa now – I’d never be friends with him. I lost my best friend in a terrorist bombing and I think it’s the ultimate in sick behavior. How vain to think your conclusions, your point of view justifies leaving an explosive around for anybody to come upon. It’s sick without even the class or intimacy of your basic lowlife serial killer. F—k Bill Ayers.

But don’t try and put this on Barack Obama. That’s desperate and stupid. The GOP will never return to greatness until it abandons the professional wrestling division of the Sean Hannity-types, and returns to intellectuals like Kathleen Parker. I swear when Sean talks you can see the muscles in his brain flex.
Their latest move is to say “Arab-American” like that in itself is something wrong. First you invent the bogeyman, then you kill the bogeyman. We’re all just people here. Don’t forget that.
I also feel tremendous loathing for the men who got us into Vietnam. You still see the victims everyday – homeless vets wandering around America with post-traumatic stress. You’ll see another victim if you watch the debate tonight.

That’s why so many of us hated the idea of a war with Iraq. These things don’t come and go in a few years. They run our country for the better part of a century afterwards. It’s not worth it.
So what’s the common theme in all this? Bombs. They won’t show us what we did to Iraq. We couldn’t take it. One bombing is treated with scorn – another is seen as noble or heroic. Interesting.
The future leader of Israel blows up a hotel killing lots of innocent people? He’s a freedom fighter. A Palestinian does it, and he’s a monster.
Why can’t we just get to the point where all bombs are viewed as wrong?

My God Bill, we actually agree on something....Ayers. I'm not sure that McCain would get the same pass if he was previously associated with someone along the lines of Eric Rudolph.....

Thomas Frank (author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?") is the token liberal -- and hired to be such -- on the WSJ editorial page. Much the same way David Brooks is the New York Times' token conservative. So don't think this reflects any softening in the WSJ's GOP grandstanding.

But indeed a great opinion piece. That McCain is choosing this as his last stand shows he deserves to lose.

Since Ayers was named Chicago's Citizen of the Year in 1997, would the GOP consider the entire city of Chicago to be terrorist sympathizers?

I think people can forgive at their own rates. I mean the Pope met with the guy who shot him, but even then it was targeted violence. Bombs are so random. That's the real sick part - the willingness to kill and maim total strangers. I think once you've made that decision you've ruined any future as a good human being, and I don't care who it is. Hey, I played in a band with a convicted murderer on drums, and I think I got past it. Okay, not completely but his crime was a mistake he made in anger. But killing people at random in a bomb plot? Planning to do it? That's all-encompassing sick.
So, is the City of Chicago made up of terrorist sympathizers? No. They got past it with this loser Ayers. Try Menachem Begin who bombed the King David Hotel and killed something like 91 people and badly hurt dozens more. That was terrorism too and he went on to be the Prime Minister of Israel.

David Brooks is the New York Times' token conservative

Really? You mean that David ("Sarah Palin is a fatal cancer on the Republican Party") Brooks? What does that make Bill Kristol? Chopped liver?

Bill wrote:
"They won’t show us what we did to Iraq. We couldn’t take it."

This - and the presence (and now, absence) of the draft - is the biggest difference between the government/media's treatment of Vietnam and our new overseas preemptive adventures: During the last years of Vietnam cameramen and reporters were on the ground and we were bombarded with brutal images of carnage every night on television. That was impossible to ignore. That isn't allowed to happen anymore so that we can distance ourselves and don't have to feel responsible . . . reminded . . . outraged.

Much easier to watch Dancing with the Stars and focusing solely on our own personal economic pain.

We are far too easily distracted.

I'm not sure that McCain would get the same pass if he was previously associated with someone along the lines of Eric Rudolph.....

McCain is closely associated with G. Gordon Liddy, who unlike Ayers is an ex-con. Liddy also told his talk radio listeners in 1994 "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." ... "They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches."

I don't hear much about this outside of the lefty blogs like HuffPost.

Why can’t we just get to the point where all bombs are viewed as wrong?

The best anti-bomb, anti-war book ever written --in my humble opinion, of course-- is Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. I first heard of it when Donald Sutherland read a passage at a peace rally in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, during the folly of the Vietnam War. It is an amazing piece of work I still think should be required reading for everyone.

That Dalton Trumbo could then go on to write the screenplay for "A man named Joe" about a bombadier pilot during WWII, played by Spencer Tracy, was simply a reflection of the changing party line in the old Communist Party, that ditched their anti-war stance in a nanosecond after Hitler invaded Russia.

It's politics, Bill, and we refuse to learn. Mother Theresa? When have more people been killed then in the name of the Prince of Peace? Thou shalt not kill? C'mon. We've just perfected it over the centuries so that we can kill hundreds of thousands with a single detonation.

The day people stop making money off war, off every bomb that is dropped, every missle launched, and every bullet fired, is when it will stop. But war consumes us as a nation, as it consumes our sons and daughters, and it's a $600 billion --and rising-- industry in America on which fortunes and careers are made. The one business that will survive and prosper through any recession.

You wrote, Bill "run our country" when I think you meant to say "ruin" --these nasty wars, and what effect they have-- but if that was in fact your meaning I think you got it right.