Bobos

Moorestown, New Jersey

Nashville

PEOPLE IN TENNESSEE couldn't even agree which side to fight on in the Civil War, but today they are united around one proposition: Bill Frist is a wonderful guy. You meet diehard Democrats who think Bill Frist is a wonderful guy, alongside Confederate loyalists. Tobacco-spitting rednecks think Bill Frist is wonderful. So do liberal college professors, suburban rabbis, African-American preachers, society dames, and minivan moms. They really should put it on the license plate: "Tennessee--Home of Bill Frist, Who Is a Wonderful Guy."

They tell you stories.

WELL, I'M HUMBLED. For the past two months me and just about every other pundit under the sun have been saying the same thing: There is no theme to this election, no trend. This nation is divided down the middle.

Wrong. This nation is still closely divided. The Republicans should not read a radical ideological mandate into the results tonight. But there is a trend here. The American people are fundamentally serious.

They know that the most important problem facing the country right now is terrorism and security. They know that George W.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

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I have been frustrated by the great American toaster for several years (Larry Miller, You Gotta Have a Toaster, Right?). I have taken the cheap toaster route, I have taken the expensive toaster route. None of them last for more than six months. The great American toaster no longer exists.

NOW THAT THE Anaheim Angels have reached the World Series, baseball nuts from Washington will be able to take the perfect conservative flight, from Ronald Reagan National Airport in D.C. to John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

But who to root for? Both teams are endearing, and both managers deserve a championship. In cases like this you have to think culturally, and here, of course, it's not even close.

We're talking about a contest between the Bay Area and Orange County. The Bay Area, of course, is the land of the Birkenstock billionaires.

HUMAN NATURE--the very idea of a human nature--has been under assault for centuries. That philosophical, historical, and anthropological attack is now fading, and end-of-history theorists, followed by sociobiologists, have come riding to human nature's defense. But they are curious defenders. Neither the alleged end of history, nor the supposed truths of sociobiology, seem to provide any real grounding for what is distinctively human in nature.

"A SINGULAR FACT OF MODERN WAR," the historian Bruce Catton once wrote, "is that it takes charge. Once begun it has to be carried to its conclusion, and carrying it there sets in motion events that may be beyond men's control. Doing what has to be done to win, men perform acts that alter the very soil in which society's roots are nourished." Catton was writing about the Civil War, but his observation applies to most wars, and it will likely apply to the war to which we are now committed.