No-Nukes Turn Pro-Nuke.

Missile defenses are one thing the Left hates more than Armageddon

Ladies and gentlemen, for your interest and edification, I'd like to make you sick with fear at the prospect of an attack on America involving missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Unfortunately I don't know how to perform this stunt. The missile attack part is easy enough. There are scientists, generals, and irrational zealots all over the world who know how to do it. But the sick-with-fear aspect of the feat is daunting.

If I say that Washington, D.C., is the target, you say it's about time something was done about our politicos. A mushroom cloud consumes Manhattan? Considering recent NASDAQ performance, it could be mistaken for an e-commerce stock crashing--another "dot.bomb." When Palm Beach County, Florida, gets nuked, the dim-wit residents will think the flash of light comes from more television cameras outside. If they do figure out what's going on, they'll be dialing 991 or 119 or P-A-T-B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N.

But seriously. There you are in a pile of rubble, bleeding profusely. Everything you have is gone. Your spouse and children scream in agony. If they don't die, they'll waste away--from hideous radiation sickness.

So how did the notion that America should posthaste build a system for fending off such horrors get to be a liberal joke? Well, it's remarkable what a small group of dedicated activists can achieve.

For 40-some years the ban the bomb bums, unilateral disarmament goonies, nuclear freeze sleaze, peace creeps, and no-nukes kooks bragged about the horrors of atomic war. There was no end to their end of the world. They painstakingly detailed Armageddon, polished the Apocalypse, rubbed and loved a radioactive holocaust that made the Jonathan Edwards sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sound like a vacation postcard from Cozumel. "Better red than dead," they shrieked. Never mind that they could have gone to Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, or Pol Pot's Cambodia and been both.

This P.R. for extinction had a dramatic effect on popular culture. There were books, movies, plays, even earnest top-40 songs about how we were all going to die, plus at least half a dozen "Twilight Zone" episodes where people emerged from their fall-out shelters to find the world ruled by three-headed mutants in a bad mood. It scared the dickens out of us.