Zell

So last night I watched, on the web, Zell Miller's speech at the RNC. Lefty Calpundit reports that the blogosphere's reaction has been energetic, and the evidently right-leaning Daily Thoughts has much more.

An army of liberators, not occupiers.
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Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

There is a name for a political philosophy that locates the core of civic virtue in the military. William Saletan reminds us that it isn't "democracy." I'll leave identifying what it is as an exercise for the reader.

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Update: Brad DeLong reports that the Republican party has noticed that people have noticed that Zell was, well, creepy.

Just a little higher, Senator Miller.