Leon Wieseltier Slams Rachel Maddow's New Book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

I didn't even know Maddow had a book, but I can't think of a better way to find out.

See Wieseltier, "Has Military Force Gone Out of Fashion":

TRASHING FORCE may win you a lot of friends, but it is stupid. There is nothing “artificial” about the primacy of defense because there is nothing artificial about threats and conflicts and atrocities. The American political system’s “disinclination” to war must not be promoted into a disinclination to history. We are not the country we were in the eighteenth century, as every liberal insists about every other dimension of American policy. Anyway, this is what President Jefferson said in 1806: “Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are, and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be.”

There are few progressives who bug me more than Rachel Maddow, so I particularly enjoyed Wiesteltier's takedown. (And he's got an excellent discussion of Syria and Iran, so count that as an added bonus.)

RTWT.