Sorry Derb, ain’t buying it. If you want to talk about a larger societal trend, fine. I probably agree with you in many respects. But this Twins thing remains a trivial and silly distraction:

A) The sterling example of Elvis in West Germany notwithstanding, it would be a very difficult task to protect the Twins in Iraq. If you say they don’t have to go to Iraq to serve, you’d be right. But that would immediately obviate the whole point of the lefties’ gripe that they’re not in harm’s way.

B) It’s not like the pro-Sheehan-left (heh) want more people to go to Iraq to win. They want to create stupid arguments like this to create momentum for everyone to leave Iraq. Not one anti-war lefty would suddenly support the war if the Twins signed up or if richer kids signed up. In other words, it’s a bad faith complaint. Maybe not for you, but for Dick Bradley and my lefty emailers it is. Besides, as one reader put it below, the President doesn’t have the authority to force his kids to join the army, while the Clinton’s did control where their kid went to school.

C) Unless you want a draft — and I don’t think the draft is so terrible a thing in principle — you still have to deal with the “problem” that the military will always provide a greater opportunity for advancement for the under-privileged than the over-priviliged and therfore it will be disproportionately drawn from the ranks of the under-privileged. The lefties certainly don’t want a draft — except, perhaps, for national serivce. So we’ve got one of those permanent problems that come with living in a free country.