Dialogue with Barnacle Bob

Barnacle Bob-

Thanks for your comments and your visits, no matter how infrequent, to our single-issue blog. Your comments called to mind a recent "Remember When" posting on AmericaBlog, to which I would add the following:

REMEMBER WHEN suggesting to a healthy heterosexual young man, who strongly and publicly supports U.S. military intervention overseas, that he consider military service for himself, was NOT described as a "blatant and directed effort to harass people simply because they dare to express a view that you disagree with," by others [such as Barnacle Bob] who also appear to support the same U.S. military intervention overseas?

'Sorry, but I never thought that a true American patriot such as yourself would consider a polite invitation to the American patriot described above to consider volunteering for our great military to be "harass"-ment, especially given your assumption that College Republicans who support the war disagree with us. I. Where did you get the idea that they disagree with us [on the war in Iraq, I assume]? Certainly not from this blog.

II. Regarding your specific criticism, we focus our efforts on self-identified College Republicans publicly supporting the war; in many cases, the College Republicans' websites include e-mail addresses of the chapter officers. 'Sorry, but if a club officer publicly posts an e-mail address, it should be no surprise if real Americans write to the club officer at that address. That's called democracy, the free exchange of ideas, and robust, uninhibited debate.

Besides, remember junk mail? If you don't want to read a particular e-mail, just delete it, something high school students do to communications from military recruiters all the time. The junior Senator from New York does the same with all mail from her 'constituents,' assuming she even knows what they are.

III. Also, not every critical communication is "hate mail;" an example is your posting on this blog. It is possible to be civil and polite, even in the absence of agreement on the issue being discussed. We support civil discussion of our topic, even though we would not post some of the comments verbatim.

IV. Here's another question: Do you think our military recruiters need help from real Americans in encouraging good prospects to consider volunteering for military service? Or, is everything going perfectly? Looking at the slightly bigger picture, nothing would please Operation Yellow Elephant more than a fully successful military recruiting situation, based on credible national leadership setting an example to convince all Americans to support, and serve in, our military. It would be great if this wasn't satire. Don't you think so?

V. You've criticized some of the things we have been doing; do you have any specific suggestions for things we could or should do? If everything is already perfect, of course, you probably don't. But if you do share our concern about the future of our military, as represented by current recruiting challenges, we welcome any further ideas you may wish to pass along.