Reading the story about Mary McGrory's backsliding after she announced that Colin Powell had persuaded her that war in Iraq was necessary, then the comments here, about novelist Ian McEwan, it occurred to me why it is that so many educated and otherwise seemingly intelligent people back the inane sophistries mounted by the left. It's because their friends do, and they don't want to be embarrassed.


Well, duh! It seems obvious, now, but then I've never been all that socially oriented. I never went to any rock concerts, peace marches (even to pick up girls), or participated in the rites of youth culture that seem so precious to a lot of these people. I like the Grateful Dead's music, but I never got to one of their concerts, never used drugs, never got drunk, or any of those things that so many of my generation look back on fondly.


I always thought you were supposed to think things through and be able to articulate and defend your views logically. If you can't, you admit them as matters of faith. But all these SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything), as Al Capp called them, resort to chanting, massing in mobs, removing their clothes, stilts and freakish costumes, and otherwise repeating inanity, in other words, emulate Woodstock, as a means of persuasion, but all they accomplish is adding to their tee-shirt collections and staying in good standing with their tribes.