CASUALTIES OF IRE? That's Mitch at Shot in the Dark exploring some of the Democratic loyalists assessing what has happened. There is a lot of such commentary going on, more than I can keep up with. Laura at 11-D has been doing a lot of linking and some thinking of her own; just keep scrolling. One school of thought that seems popular with the angry opposition is the "you broke it, you bought it" reasoning. Timothy Burke is modifying an ancient principle of mine, which is that sometimes the best way to demonstrate the folly of a rule is to comply with it.

If the next four years bring the crop of suffering and failure that I fully expect them to bring, it may be easier to convince suburbanites, married women, the young, to see where their interests and their rational judgement ought to lie.

Here's a challenge for you, Professor Burke. Get out of the common room and become familiar with the theory and the evidence on public policies. You might want to start with Tyler Cowen's suggestions at Marginal Revolution (I particularly like point 7; advising the Powers that Be for pay has its charms.) William Tucker's recent American Spectator essay merits your review, not your dismissal.

Today we live in a dangerous, dangerous world. On Election Day a Moslem extremist in Holland murdered the great-grandnephew of Vincent Van Gogh because he had made a movie critical of Arab culture. These are not ordinary times. We have enemies who don't play our game but are striking at the very root of our civilization.

Democrats have got a lot of thinking to do about our place in the world and the roots of our culture. They don't have a very good record. In the 1960s, liberals loosened the screws on the criminal justice system just because it might be fun to see what happened. They expected crime to drop. Instead, it rose to unprecedented heights for thirty years. Only in the 1990s when states started reinforcing the death penalty and Rudy Giuliani decided to reimpose social order did the wave subside.

Get the picture? We have seen the fruits of your efforts, and by them we know you. We are not sailing on a ship of fools, and we will not be put down as uninformed or misguided. (Michele at A Small Victory, via Newmark's Door, would suggest you get a grip.) Regular readers of these pages have received encouragement from me for a long time.

Let me propose a simpler explanation. The America of the 1950s was an America that worked. The counterculture that followed did not. It's more accurate to describe aspects of it as alien, immoral, and destructive.

And that counterculture continues to have too much influence on the academy and on the national Democratic party.