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I understand the point that you are making, and I see the merit in what you are trying to say. If we are in an all-out war to defeat our enemies at whatever cost and return to our normal way of life, I can understand making some sacrifices. Rationing gasoline during WWII was justified, but during that war, we were willing to bomb German and Japanese cities into complete submission in order to break our enemies' will to fight. The idea was that we would do what was necessary to achieve total victory so that we could go back to the lifestyle that we once knew.

My problem with so much of what I see today is that we aren't making temporary sacrifices to defeat an enemy completely even at the cost of some collateral damage. Instead, we refuse to do anything that generates collateral damage and accept the loss of our freedoms as a normal and permanent change. That change won't win the war or keep us safe.

On a side note, the diet and exercise analogy really doesn't fit. In the case of diet and exercise inconvenience versus heart health, the issue is a personal issue of risk, cost, and consequence for each individual. As long as the government isn't involved, each individual can and should weigh the risks and rewards of each lifestyle and make personal choices.

Bill

Good points about our adversion to collarteal damage, jet we accept erosion of our way of life.

Even though we are not asked to make sacrifices, I'll do something anyway, which is to send packages to the warfighters overseas, assist the wounded stateside and to contribute to the foundations and trust funds providing higher education for the children of the fallen.

And I know that I am not alone because I see example after example of Americans doing the same thing.

Man, it's getting difficult to disagree with you.

The only relevance of the diet and exercise analogy is if we identify with our nation.

And, yeah, we, as a nation, seem kind of half-hearted about this thing. Part of that is the success of the left in taking over our educational system. People don't know history, especially military history. They haven't read, say, Caesar or Plutarch so they know neither how different the US is from a real imperialist country nor what it takes to win a war. They haven't even heard of Danegeld so they think we can buy our enemies off. If you say,"Si vis pacem, para bellum," they either have no clue or they think your a bloodthirsty nut.