"For all the disdain and condescension that is often leveled at small town conservative America, it's the men and women from those places who often make it possible for the rest of us to live in peace and security." - Andrew Sullivan

The Traitor and the Patriot

What do we make of John Walker, the American-kid-turned-Taliban-terrorist? Consider him in light of Johnny "Mike" Spann, the American patriot who became the first U.S. combat casualty of the war shortly after interrogating Walker at Mazar e Sharif. Andrew Sullivan’s 'Johnny Walker Red' essay in the Dec. 16 London Sunday Times has it right.

“Much of the country knows instinctively the kind of mindset that makes a John Walker possible. Besides, the left is in a very difficult position arguing that it is wrong to blame an entire subculture for the actions of a tiny few. For years now, they have used the example of Timothy McVeigh to indict any anti-government Republican from the heartland. Yes, guilt by association is wrong and unfair. But context tells you something.

And what the story of John Walker and John Spann tells us is that for all the disdain and condescension that is often leveled at small town conservative America, it's the men and women from those places who often make it possible for the rest of us to live in peace and security.

Americans won't press the point now. The argument is far too divisive and rancorous to gain traction in the middle of a war. But my guess is that we are witnessing a deep and profound cultural shift in the United States. The post-Vietnam liberalism that swept through an entire generation, the cultural liberalism that despised Nixon and sustained Clinton, is in a profound and perhaps irreversible retreat.

And one reason is that in the story of John Spann and John Walker, an obvious truth was revealed. We all need a sense of right and wrong - from childhood onwards. And patriotism, that atavistic, powerful, but beleaguered sentiment, is a function neither of weak minds nor feeble prejudice. Sometimes, it is a surpassing virtue, and its opposite a vain and callow evil."

Also, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby brilliantly dissects why John Walker became a traitor and a Taliban, in his Dec. 13 column, in which he notes that Walker's parents "appear never to have rebuked their son or criticized his choices," and that they provided their son with "no absolutes, no fixed truths, no mandatory behavior, no thou-shalt-nots. If they had one conviction, it was that all convictions are worthy - that nothing is intolerable except intolerance."