The Quiet Observer

The always thoughtful Michael Barone writing in the New York Sun on the "Disappearing us"

One of the salutary results of the Clinton administration, I thought, was that it got liberals and Democrats in the habit of using the first person plural. U.S. military forces in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere were 'our troops.' NATO and Japan and Australia and all the rest were 'our allies.'

The second person plural used to come naturally to all Americans. G.I.s in World War II were 'our boys' (the second word now politically incorrect and also inaccurate), whether you were a Republican or a Democrat, from the North or the South, black or white. But the Vietnam War got liberals out of that habit. American troops were 'the military.' They were sent into Lebanon and Grenada not by 'the president,' but by 'the Reagan administration.' (Did anyone say that troops were ordered to Normandy or Iwo Jima by 'the Roosevelt administration'?) The Gulf War in 1991 was regarded by most Democrats and liberals as 'their war.'

The very reasonableness and decency of quiet spoken Barone makes his indictment of liberal and Democrats all that more compelling.