Quoth Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld on the limitless movie franchise possibilities of the war with Iraq.

Gene Healy speculates about a certain strain of what he calls “McLibertarians” — Irish-American libertarians influenced by the Irish people’s experience with brutality and repression at the hands of, well, everyone to have a deeply engrained enmity toward the state.

Nice story. It might even be true. The Irish-American experience is as good an example of good, old fashioned collectivism as you’ll find. From the “Gangs of New York”-era racism and blood feuds to the Irish domination of machine politics (and its major beneficiaries, firefighters and police officers) in major cities like Boston, New York and Chicago, it’s just one long tale of getting ahead by getting in good with the government.

And the homeland ain’t so hot, either. They’ve been fighting for decades over Northern Ireland, essentially in a contest to see which side can force its religion down the other’s throat. Hardly a libertarian sentiment. I’m an O’Reilly. I’m a libertarian. But I’m not going to let sentiment get in the way of reality here. It’s much likelier that white men in America are much more predisposed (though still by a far margin mostly indisposed) toward to the ideas of freedom. That explains a lot more than Irishness.

By the way, at least one historian says the “No Irish Need Apply” thing has been blown way out of proportion, latched onto by Irish-Americans eager to claim some victimhood and overlook the nasty legacy of Irish involvement in American political history.

You know a war’s on because the airline industry’s best pals in Congress are promising a bailout. Technically, federal loan guarantees. Whatever. It’s still government-dependent corporate behemoths taking advantage of the war for their own ends.

Running an airline means losing money during bad economic times. Get used to it, or get out, but don’t go running to your buddies in Washington, D.C. And by the way, how do you expect to make a profit when you’re charging $400-plus for a three-day trip to Houston, Texas, so Karen and I can visit her friends and family there. Losers.

To answer my earlier question, no, it’s not too late for a patriotic American to criticize the war the U.S. has just begun against Iraq.

Any decent person hopes against hope that casualties on both sides will be limited, that the war will be over quickly, and that peace may soon come to that troubled part of the world. But that does not make it wrong to criticize the war, because its having begun does not somehow endow it with purpose it did not have before.

The war is still unnecessary. It is still unwise. It is still an injudicious use of American military power that should be used to defend the United States against real threats, not hypothetical ones.

But now the question, as Tom Palmer put it so well, is what should a serious anti-war take on the post-Hussein situation should be. Gene Healy hopes in vain that there might actually be a way to turn the end of this war in a non-interventionist direction:

In a short while, we’ll be in a position to say we came, we saw, we flattened an anti-American regime. “We’re leaving now. Pretend to be democratic and don’t set up any terrorist training camps, or we’ll do it again.”

Except Iraq never set up any terrorist camps, which Healy knows all too well. But that aside, Dubya & Co. have already committed themselves to a lengthy rebuilding process, and it doesn’t seem clear to me that just leaving them to be is the responsible solution after decades of totalitarian rule, sanctions and war. Is that the grown-up response Palmer was thinking of? I doubt it.

What is the right way to go? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the U.S. should not turn Iraq into a base for further adventures in the Middle East, antagonizing the entire Arab world even more than it already has. If there is a rebuilding job to do that takes two years before transitioning to an Iraqi republic with some kind of international peacekeeping/weapons inspections presence thereafter, so be it. That’s the boat we’re in now.

But Iraq should not be the first step toward anything. No one will be sad to see Hussein’s regime go. I won’t be. Let’s leave it at that.

It is interesting to me that so much public opinion seemed to rest on the fate of the matter in the United Nations. For months, public opinion pollsters told us that Americans’ view of a war on Iraq differed greatly depending on whether or not the U.S. could secure U.N. approval. Ultimately, though, the argument for or against the war rested not with the random assortment of nations on the U.N. Security Council but with the American people and their representatives.

Those representatives gave up the game early on, even before it got to the middle innings. Anti-warriors clung desperately to the hope that the U.N. could stave off war, like the crafty veteran left-handed pinch hitter subbed in for a pitcher in the bottom of the ninth. But as Dubya said in his press conference, “When it comes to our security, we don’t need anyone’s permission.”

That’s absolutely true. Do the American people disagree? They’re supporting the war now at a 70 percent clip. Are they suddenly convinced about the Iraqi threat in a way that they were not before? A threat is a threat is a threat. The truth does not depend on mere “world opinion.” The problem in this instance is that other countries’ self-interested opposition to the war happened to coincide with the truth.

Radley Balko writes that the discrediting of the U.N. may be the one good thing to come of this whole episode. Perhaps. It seems to me that the most likely result is a quick U.S. victory followed by the same kind of triumphalism seen after the Afghan victory, regardless of the subsequent return to lawlessness and tribalism there.

That triumphalism will reinforce the neoconservatives‘ worldview and their heft in the circles of elite opinion, and the rebirth of the kind of perpetual around-the-world war that was characteristic of the Cold War until Vietnam. From the fall of the Berlin Wall until Sept. 11, U.S. went to war in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. It was not a peaceful decade-plus. But it was an ad hoc policy borne out of naked self-interest (as opposed to self-defense), confusion, presidential self-aggrandizement and military-complex survivalism.

What we are faced with now is much more dangerous. It is an overarching ideology of American messianism which is inherently dangerous to American liberty, the very thing we are supposed to be defending against Al Qaeda and its filthy ilk. It is a distraction at best, and it is only beginning.

On the domestic front, the libertarian-conservative coalition that seemed triumphant with the 1994 elections is all but shattered. Yes, Dubya has gone further on Social Security choice than anyone else, but he gave up the game on vouchers and doesn’t even to pretend to care about restraining federal spending. The doctrine of “national greatness” will drown out the libertarian wing of the Republican Party and coalesce with the socially conservative wing to form a truly conservative with only hints of a classical liberal bent thrown in here and there for good measure.

And with whom will the liberty lovers be left? The Democrats, who couldn’t even muster a fight against a president who didn’t even win the popular vote two and a half years ago? The Democrats, whose long ago dedication to civil liberties and social freedoms (aside from abortion rights) has been swept under a tide of identity politics and political correctness? Please.

Here, then. Here is your war. Here is the bleak, bleak future of liberty in the world. Would you like some freedom fries with that?

The United States is urging U.N. inspectors to get outta Dodge — er, Baghdad. Dubya will address the nation tonight about the need for moderation in our celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. No, really, he’s gonna help us get our war on.

Is it now too late for a patriotic American to criticize the war on Iraq? More to come later. Now I’ve got to go to this news conference.

We voted for mayor and City Council in Chicago on Tuesday. Well, a few of us did. Well, a few of them did. I didn’t vote, because there was no choice. Mayor Daley, running against three no-name candidates who couldn’t even afford yard signs, not to mention TV ads, garned 79 percent of the vote and won all 50 wards.

A record-low turnout of about 400,000 voters definitely put a damper on Da Mare’s festivities. U.S. Census stooges counted 2.8 million people in Chicago proper in 2000. That means, if I have the math right, that only 14 percent of Chicagoans voted. And only 12 percent voted for Daley.

Wow. It’s like the opposite of Iraq where 100 percent turned out for Hussein. This is dictatorship by apathy. Another great Daley achievement.

The Chicago Tribune ran a very obnoxious story about Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) last Sunday. “Bill Frist makes no apologies for taking a private-sector approach to America’s substantial health-care problems,” the subhead reads. Here are the first few grafs:

At almost every turn, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist reminds people that he’s a skilled and trusted doctor, not just a politician.

As he walked to the Senate chamber to be sworn in as leader last month, the Tennessee Republican compared the exhilaration of the moment to his first heart transplant. In 2001, when anthrax threatened the Capitol complex, Frist published a handy guide: “What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism From the Senate’s Only Doctor.” On the door to his new suite of offices, the sign reads, “William H. Frist, MD.”

Now he is charged with nursing President Bush’s legislative agenda through the Senate. But a look at Frist’s history suggests that his approach to numerous complicated health-care matters is shaped more by being a conservative Republican — with a strong affinity for business and a family that founded a for-profit hospital chain — than by being a physician.

Apparently, conservatism (which in this case means a preference for markets over government control) is incompatible with being a physician. Because, of course, no doctor, Zuckman seems to suggest, who wasn’t blinded by free-market dogma would possibly prefer market solutions to health-care issues.

Frist “does not deny his strong preference for business-oriented solutions,” Zuckman writes. Why should he? Is there something to be ashamed of? Zuckman implies it, but never comes out and says it.

She then quotes a professor of Frist’s who says, “Culturally, he’s a physician and he would like every patient who suffers to get state-of-the-art medical care without having their family go bankrupt, but to be a player in Washington, you cannot offend the White House, and obviously he probably will temper his own preferences with a view of whether it causes trouble for the White House, because I think he’s a team player.”

Huh? So he’s not really a free-marketeer? He’s just going along to get along? And again, there’s this suggestion that, gee, if Congress just put its mind to it, every patient could have state-of-the-art care with no problem. As if socialized medicine didn’t lead to worse care and fewer innovations and longer waits.

Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed by the Chicago Tribune recently said they will vote to give Richard M. Daley, Mayor, another four years in office.

Though we are less than a week away from election day, there have been no debates. Daley won’t stoop to that. There have been no TV ads for mayoral candidates other than Daley. The most you see around town to even give you a clue there’s an election coming up are huge signs with Daley’s name at the top and the name of the aldermanic incumbent on the bottom. It’s a wonder they bother to switch out the names. I suppose “Daley/Daley Stooge” would be too obvious.

Where to start? More than half of the City Council has been appointed by Daley. His political forces control everything that happens in the city. He has been busted several times for giving contracts to cronies, and treats public records as if they were his personal property.

A misguided system of tax preferences for big companies that threaten to leave town means Daley gets good publicity when they decide to stick around — if they do — but the average citizen (and business owner) has to pay that much more to make up the difference. And when Daley realized — whoops — that revenues were down and the city would be millions in debt, rather than force the government to take the hit he sicced his parking goons on the suckers too poor to afford a garage and too unskilled to have a job that gets them home at 5:30 p.m. so they can find a spot on the street.

Education? The test scores have inched up a little bit, and things may be a little better than they were before the city took control of the school board under Daley. But where are the charter schools that have flourished in other cities? Where’s the voucher program for poor kids that Milwaukee and Cleveland have? Where’s the competition to force government-run schools to improve?

Chicago is now the No. 1 murder capital, yet continues to push an ineffective gun ban and the useless war on drugs. The city still struggles to attract businesses. Money is poured into wasteful, big projects like the disastrous new Soldier Field, the three times over budget Millennium Park, and the long-delayed expansion of O’Hare Airport. Daley has made privatization a dirty word by taking the formula set forth in cities like Indianapolis and used it as an excuse to make his cronyism harder to track.

Essentially, no one trusts that the privatized contracts are actually going to the most lowest, most qualified bidders and that the contractor’s delivering the best service at the lowest price because no one trusts the process. How could they, when Daley’s administration routinely hides mundane details about how contracts are awarded and so many escape any meaningful bid process at all?

In other words, things are not hunky dory. But opposition candidates have been beaten mercilessly and by progressively larger margins since Daley took office in 1989. No one wants to pour the money and the time into a losing race. And so they are co-opted by a very clever politician who may not get much done but knows how to make sure that everyone gets his little piece. Even the news media score an occasional coup and can sneer at the mayor without ever really doing anything about it (except voicing the obligatory “buts” before unanimously endorsing him).

What a waste. And no one else to vote for. Not anyone who cares about liberty. Not in Chicago.

The International Society for Individual Liberty has purchased Free-Market.Net, effectively saving it from the wrecking ball.

ifeminists.com wound up with the Independent Institute and Bureaucrash is going its own way. It’s still tough to tell how the Henry Hazlitt Foundation‘s collapse will affect the content, appearance and missions of these Web sites, but it’s good news that they’ve found homes and won’t disappear entirely.

Who knows, they may emerge stronger yet. Here’s to spontaneous order.