Over at the Corner, John Derbyshire had this to say about Michael Moore’s appearance last night on Bill O’Reilly’s show:

Just caught the Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly exchange. They were both pretty slow-footed, though I’d give it to O’Reilly on points.

The Big Mick would not give a straight answer to Moore’s question: "Would you sacrifice your child for Fallujah?" All right, it’s a stupid question as phrased. O’Reilly should have said that. Then he should have said this: "If a child of mine wished to pursue a career in the U.S. military, I should be proud. If he was then sent off to fight in a hot war, in which the USA had engaged under the proper conventional and constitutional procedures of this republic -- under the command of the President, with the approval of the Congress -- I would make no attempt to stop him. If he died in combat, I should grieve as a loving parent; but I would blame nobody. And if anyone tried to make political capital out of my child’s death, I would loathe that person."

The Left has never departed in any significant way from Leninist collectivism. Human beings are not autonomous spiritual beings, possessed of free will. They are mechanical units who need to be directed, governed, shoveled around like so many truckloads of concrete, socially engineered. Or they are "children," to be scolded and directed and constantly supervised.

Evelyn Waugh once interrupted someone who was telling him something about "the man in the street." Said Waugh: "There is no such thing as ’the man in the street.’ There are only men, each possessed of an immortal soul, who from time to time feel the need to use streets." I imagine that to Michael Moore, that remark is utterly incomprehensible.