…has long been one of those New Republic liberal-buts. (That’s a fella who says “I’m a liberal, but…” just before he endorses every conservative position.) But now, even Kinsley’s sounding the alarm on war posturing as a domestic attack against democracy:

“The official U.S. government message on how citizens should decide about going to war is, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it.’ Last week the White House issued a sort of Official Souvenir Guide to the Bush administration’s national security policy, and it is full of rhetoric about democracy. Yet that policy itself, including at least one likely war, has been imposed on the country entirely without benefit of democracy. George W.’s war on Iraq will be the reductio ad absurdum of America’s long, slow abandonment of any pretense that the people have any say in the question of whether their government will send some of them far away to kill and die.”