Joel Mathis

 Dreher offers up a semi-defense of Lee, reflecting on a 1970s-era essay by Wendell Berry:  As Berry makes clear, the tragedy of Robert E. Lee was that no matter which choice he made, there would have been pain. For Lee to have remained loyal to the Union would not have entailed mere disagreement with his family and his people; it would have required him to make war on them. This is something I don’t think we fully consider today — that is, what it means to make war (a real shooting war) on your own family. Could you do it today, to remain loyal to the government in Washington? Even though we are far more connected and aware today, thanks to technology, than the Americans of the 1860s were, it is still a hell of a thing to ask people to take up arms against their own friends and family to be loyal to a distant abstraction. Would you turn your abilities against your own people? Even if those people believed wrong things? Even if they believed wicked things? I could conceive of a circum

It's become something of a meme among portions of the right ( and in the military ) in recent months that American troops in Afghanistan aren't really allowed to defend themselves, and that those troops are thus more exposed to danger than they should have to. It's an argument that ignores, completely, one of the central points of counterinsurgency doctrine : The people of a country are the "battlefield" that is to be won -- and if you kill innocent civilians, you're probably losing that battlefield. Via BBC , proof of the concept: The authors of the report by the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research say they analysed 15 months of data on military clashes and incidents totalling more than 4,000 civilian deaths in a number of Afghan regions in the period ending on 1 April. They say that in areas where two civilians were killed or injured by Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), there were on average an extra six vi

There's been a lot of talk about the apparent racism and historical ignorance of Virgina Gov. Bob McDonnell's proclamation of "Confederate History Month." But racism aside, I think Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a good point that we don't think about very often. Speaking of Republicans who approve of McDonnell's actions, he says : If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. Well, yeah. Defenders of the Confederate flag and other efforts to honor the Old South always say they're not interested in slavery or racism but heritage . Let's leave aside how the racism and slavery are inextricably bound up in that heritage; we'll ignore them entirely. (Although Republicans who chafe under the burden of racism accusations might stop and consider, for a moment, how actions like McDonnell's look to African Americans.) Even putting its best foot forward, the reason the Confederacy existed was to tear asun