I would have declared the enemy to be militant Islam and the states that allow militant Islam to exist.

I would have sought a congressional declaration of war against each of these states and attacked them as a whole.

I would have ruthlessly destroyed each of these Islamic governments and the larger institutions that made these governments possible. I would have dethroned their kings and dictators, leveled their capitals, shattered their mosques, humiliated their mullahs and ayatollahs and eviscerated their ability to project force.

I would have had the US quit the UN, on the grounds that a world forum that includes tyrants is no forum of value to a free nation. I would have acted as if the United States had an unquestionable right to exist--and that no one's religion or ideology gives them just cause to attack us.

Under Islam, it is held that fire belongs only to Allah. Had I been president, I would have taught the Islamic world--and anyone else who seeks to threaten our people--that fire belongs to the United States of America.

In short, I would not have been that impotent coward of a president who now desecrates the most prestigious and important political office in our land.

In their op-ed "The National Conversation in the Wake of Littleton is Missing the Mark," Jackson Katz and Sut Jhally (2000) hold that the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, where two teenaged students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 other students and a teacher before committing suicide is the result of patriarchy. Katz and Jhally argue that Harris and Klebold's rampage is "not a crisis in youth culture but a crisis in masculinity." If it were not, the authors ask, "why are girls, who live in the same environment, not responding in the same way?"

According to Katz and Jhally, the gender distinction forming men's violent tendencies is shaped by media, arts, sports and other social institutions that produce "a stream of images of violent, abusive men and promotes characteristics such as dominance, power, and control as means of establishing or maintaining manhood."

Yet Katz and Jhally's argument falls flat for the simple reason that Harris and Klebold committed suicide; their rampage was about nihilism and psychopathic contempt for all life-- and not the supremacy of men. Patriarchy, however wrong-headed, at least aspires to empower men; Harris and Klebold, as they drew their weapons upon themselves in their final act of violence, empowered no one.

In "The Depressive and the Psychopath," Dave Cullen (2004) makes a key identification in understanding the motives of the killers. Noting the FBI's analyses of the psychology of Harris and Klebold, the year they spent planning their attack and the failed propane bombs the pair manufactured in their attempt to explode the school and produce a death toll exceeding several hundred, Cullen remarks:

Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the "worst school shooting in American history." They set their sights on eclipsing the world's greatest mass murderers, but the media never saw past the choice of venue. The school setting drove analysis in precisely the wrong direction.

The Columbine massacre was not about the conflict between geeks and jocks in high school or the tendency of some boys to rough up their perceived lessors. It was about wholesale elevation of death for the sake of death. Accordingly, a more plausible theory to explain what led Harris and Klebold to choose murder is that they were the consummate achievement of a philosophic and educational system that promotes whim-worship over cognitive ability.

For years, the proponents of progressive education have controlled America's educational institutions. The hallmark of progressive education is the view that children should discover or construct their own knowledge; one thinks of the famous progressive chestnut that the mission of the educator is not to teach school subjects, but "to teach Johnny." In understanding human division, the progressive philosophy of education maintains that the cause of social strife is the unwillingness of an individual to sacrifice his convictions to the group. Glen Woiceshyn (1997) of the Ayn Rand Institute observes that philosopher John Dewey, the founder of progressive education, maintained that it is the insistence on distinctions such as "true versus false" and "right versus wrong" that generates social conflict. Interpreting Dewey's thought, he says, "If only children did not hold strong ideas, disagreement and conflict would evaporate in the sunshine of social harmony. Truth, therefore, is socially fractious - while ignorance is bliss."

Yet without clear instruction in how to think and how to perceive reality objectively--including the recognition that others have rights--Woiceshyn argues that children are vehicles out of control.

"Which feelings will guide [the child]? The fear and anxiety generated by ignorance and cognitive incompetence? The frustration and rage felt when his desires aren't immediately satisfied? The self-hatred that gets subconsciously projected at others? The false security offered by a gang? The desire to control others by force because of an inability to control reality?

What definitely won't guide him is reason - which is why violence is on the rise."

In understanding the violence that animates the seemingly innocent, it is not enough to observe that the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre were boys, or that they played violent video games, or that they listened to dark music. Millions of boys do the same things. One must examine the basic foundation of Harris and Klebold's thinking-the very philosophic choices that they made and that were made for them by others.

Protesting military recruiters on campus, so long as they ban open gays from joining, is admirable. But there's a more permanent reason to keep the military away from our brightest students. Young males are easily manipulated during the period of their lives when they exist outside the female domain, after the mother and before the wife. They are above all eager to demonstrate masculinity. With its promises of order, fraternity and cohesion, the military taps into this angst.

A real tragedy occurs when a young man, susceptible to the military's appeal and nonetheless intelligent and creative, signs up to become cannon fodder. He'll probably leave the military alive, but he'll have been irreversibly molded, less inclined to dissent. Less intelligent people are better equipped for most military positions, and have far less to lose.

BB&T Corporation today said it will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.

The commercial lending policy change comes in the wake of Kelo v. City of New London, a controversial Supreme Court decision in June that said governments can seize personal property to make room for private development projects.

The court's ruling cleared the way for an expansion of eminent domain authority historically used primarily for utilities, rights of way and other public facilities.

"The idea that a citizen's property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it's just plain wrong," said BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison.

"One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own. As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won’t help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership."

Greenspan summed up the trade-offs behind his deregulatory philosophy in a series of unusually lucid speeches in London in 2002, on the eve of being knighted by Queen Elizabeth. "The extent of government intervention in markets to control risk-taking," he said, "is a trade-off between economic growth and its associated potential instability, and a more civil but less stressful way of life with a lower standard of living."