I like this idea.  It'll demand the cooperation of American companies, tho, like Cisco and Google who may be leery of helping break down the Great Firewall until they're confident they won't be attacked in retaliation.

Which brings me back to my main point.  The new cyber war demands a strong flexible "deep" defense, as well as hard-hitting offensive tools. 

Well, the Chinese themselves don't see it that way.  Shen Weigunang, who's the godfather of modern Chinese cyber strategy, writes about this in The Third World War-Total Information War, that the key to IW is "forcing enemy soldiers to surrender without a fight" by controlling the flow of information and intel, so that you take away their ability, and even desire, to respond to your threats.
That's supposed to make up for their relative inferiority to us in conventional arms: make us lose the fight before it starts.

From their point of view, I'd say we're in the cyberwar phase right now.

I can'tbelieve we're just supposed to drift with the cultural tide, and  I hope that's not what Rick Wilson is arguing.   Libertarianism as well as conservatism rest on never letting mass opinion, which is constantly changing and clings to a belief only as long as it believes everyone else believes the same thing, determine what issues are worth fighting for, and which aren't.  

Otherwise you're just giving in to what Mill warned about with the "tyranny of the majority,"the tendency of society to impose, by means other than civil penalties, its own rules and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them...and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own"--and that's what seems to be happening with SSM. 

Leadership is framing the issues, not being framed by them. 

For Duane, here's a piece of counterfactual history that isn't fantasy.  IfGeorge W Bush hadn't sent troops in to take out Saddam and find those WMD's Clinton, Gore, Mad Albright, and Nancy Albright warned us all about, the Democrats would have made his inaction the major foreign policy theme of the 2004 presidential campaign, attacking him for passivity bordering on cowardice and for doing nothing while Saddam and assorted terrorist groups worked toward an even more catastrophic repeat of the  9/11 attack.

For  Neolibertarian: thanks for the compliment, and I think I see your point! The fact that opposition or about the war was feckless and disingenuous after OIF doesn't mean all of it was before.

So  stipulated.  And yet....Looking back it's hard not to see an overwhelming consensus running the other way, In March 2003  the Pew poll showed 72 percent of Americans supported Bush and OIF.   That confidence that we were doing the right thing was especially strong after the stunning success of the Afghan operation which knowledgable critics said couldn't be done--and yet Bush and Rumsfeld had been proved right and the critics wrong.   

That statistic, which gets quoted a lot, is misleading because it refers to direct federal funding for research etc and leaves off the biggest source of federal support of all, government student loans--$133 billion worth in 2010 and $157 billion in 2011.   There's your driver of tuition inflation: in fact, economist Richard Vedder calculates that every dollar of student aid adds 35 cents to every dollar of tuition.   Talk about mulitplier effect.

It's exactly the same as health care.  Third party payer solutions mean higher costs. 

I understand the stated worry now for John Boehner and others is that Obama is trying to "annihilate" the Republican Party.   What's worse, being targeted for annihilation or proclaiming that you think you're a fair target for annihilation?    Who clears these statements, John Stewart?!

But I refuse to be pessimistic! 

Really?  Think how many opposed ObamaCare from the beginning, how many say in Gallop polls the federal government doesn't have the answer to our problems (sadly, the 19 to 35 year olds are the one cohort who hold out on that question), and how many still voted for Mitt Romney in '12--even when the campaign turned their back on them. 

What's extraordinary and ironic is how close Romney actually came: and how many finally rallied to an uncertain cause.   

That's my point!  The failure isn't at the grass roots, it's at the top.  And it can and must be fixed--or the Obama legacy stretches beyond 2016 to a dark chasm far beyond. 

Please.  A legislative proposal isn't leadership! That's Washington think: when the truth is voters go to sleep at the mention of one--including your low information ones.

Leadership would be saying, this president is incapable of negotiating in good faith, he intends us all to go over the cliff, and so we walk away.  People invoke Ronald Reagan's name so often!  But we don't need the Ronald  Reagan who schmoozed with Tip O'Neill; there aren't any Tip O'Neills. We need the one who walked away at Reykjavik, who called the Soviet Union an evil empire and plotted its downfall even as he went through the motions of arms control negotations.   

Because that's the kind of opponent we face.

I'm forced to point out a couple of things to my friends EJHill and Tom Lindholtz.

The great legacy of the American Revolution was an idea, that of limited government.  Outside of the United States, it didn't leave much of an footprint--even in places like France and Latin America that claimed their revolutions were inspired by ours.   It wasn't until after 1945 that the idea gained international traction, I'd argue--in part because people finally saw where the alternative led.

Second,  yes the civil war ended slavery in the US.   But we were behind the times--the French and British had led the way decades before.  

But this is getting beside the point!   Let's stipulate that the term "Greatest Generation" is a convenient label, not an absolute value judgment.    Let's further stipulate that previous generations in American history made sacrifices and contributions at least as equal.

The issue still remains.   Where are we going to find the courage, dedication, maturity, and skills needed to reinvigorate this country?   Personally I like EThompson's answer.  The returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. 

In response to Shane: I think I struck a nerve.

I don't think anyone's been Brokaw'd!  No one doubts the courage and sacrifice of the Americans who fought the Revolution and the Civil War.   What made the World War Two generation different wasn't just that they changed the country, but they changed the world--and then in 1950 came back to defend that world from Communism.

The Americans who experienced World War One (by and large) learned to cultivate a sense of victimization and disillusionment. They were fertile ground for those pushing radical solutions to the nation's problems, from the extreme right as well as the extreme left.  That was the generation that spawned the New Deal, Huey Long, and Father Coughlin, not to mention the CPUSA--not the ones who fought the 1941-45 war or who built the weapons they needed to win it.

I was thinking of the GOP Congressional "leadership" but I'm glad Goldgeller brought up Romney, which goes to prove my point.

Why didn't Romney press harder on the Benghazi debacle?  He didn't want appear mean-spirited or fit any of the other negative stereotypes that the liberal media use to ensnare and emasculate Republicans.    Machiavelli would say, he thought it was more important that he be loved...ie loved by the New York Times!    

Big mistake.

 Want some more Alinsky?  Try this one:

"The organizer...must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act."

Does that not define the entire GOP problem?  Instead of tearing into Obama's vulnerabilities and missteps and starting a fight, they say nothing and hope they'll get credit for bipartisanship.    Instead, they let the opposition choose the time and place for battle. 

"The organizer becomes a carrier for curiosity, for a people asking 'why' are beginning to rebel."

This is a war for our nation's survival.  Republicans need to act like it--and then they'll rally those who want to know "why."