If anyone can explain the point of this piece from Georgie Anne Geyer, I'd be grateful. She seems to be criticizing the U. S. for not repeating the mistake in 1983 of not adequately protecting our Marines who were stationed as "peacekeepers" in Lebanon, since today our troops in Iraq are better protected. But, Geyer moans, our troops today are just as "isolated from the people" as those Marines twenty years ago.

I would have thought that the key fact was that we had learned a lesson from the years of watching U. N. peacekeepers being totally impotent and decided that the best way to keep the peace is to shoot the people who are causing the problem, and don't let suicide bombers get close to you. But she seems to be saying that we should be out there bonding like social workers with the locals. I suppose we would be better off if all our troops spoke Arabic, but I don't think that's her point, either.

I watched a program this morning about how Stalin decimated his own armed forces prior to WWII with repeated purges which deprived them of most of their officers and the engineers who were building weapons and airplanes. I kept wondering why the military didn't fight back and hang him. I guess that's just the way people are. If they have never been free; they don't know how to be self-reliant; and if the government gives them all that they have, they tend to complain about the government rather than throw it off and take responsibility for themselves.

I've just read Joseph Ellis' book, American Sphinx, about Thomas Jefferson. He was eloquent about freedom, but he wasn't very good at it in his own life. He gave all Americans their ideas about freedom and independence, but he seemed to think that all we had to do is eliminate government and the self-reliant American yeoman farmers would take care of themselves from there on out. Experience hasn't born out his ideas, but we can't shake them, because they are such attractive myths. Basically, we all overemphasize our personal rights and minimize the expectations of others. That's where libertarianism comes from, but it's not really workable, as Jefferson's life shows. Maybe Ellis didn't cover it, but I didn't read anything in the book about the duties of citizenship. I've always thought that a republic depends on people making it work properly by keeping an eye on their representatives, but Jefferson didn't seem to be as hortatory about that as he was about throwing off the yoke of tyranny. What we have to think about, is that when we throw off the yoke, the load doesn't get pulled until someone puts it back on. The real point which Washington and Adams seemed to understand was that what we fought for in the Revolutionary War was not for no more yokes, but for the right to bear the yokes we choose, even without the lash and reins being held by someone else, and for the right to claim more of the rewards for pulling.