On my suggestion for a poll on the question: “Should the U.S.A. commit to go to war with Russia on behalf of Georgia?”, numerous readers pointed out that some large fraction of Americans, never having heard of Georgia-in-the-Caucasus, would take the question to refer to Georgia-the-Empire-State-of-the-South.

All right, all right, I’ll rephrase my poll question: “Should the U.S.A. commit to go to war with Russia on behalf of Caucasians?” There now, that’s much less ambiguous.

To the several readers who thought I had said that the President should or should not go to war based on poll numbers: Hmmm. In the first place, the president doesn’t go to war, the U.S.A. goes to war, with Congress declaring the war, or at the very least agreeing to fund it. The president may give the finger to poll results, but congresscritters mostly … don’t. To the argument that the president (Congress, whatever) ought to do what’s right and to heck with poll numbers: Hmmm again. It’s arguable in the case of polls at thirty or forty percent. If our government were to take big and expensive action on something that was polling at five or ten percent, though, I’d say that the action would be wrong ipso facto. Public opinion isn’t everything; but it also isn’t nothing.