America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.

Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed.

They still want utopia, and it wouldn't be worth mentioning except that their naivetŽ has aged into a persistent denial of reality that may have devastating consequences.

For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi stormtroopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims of imperialistic corporations.

Such nonsense, now treated as legitimate by the left-leaning media, denigrates the patriotic values and sincerity of half the nation. It undermines the war effort, insults the dead and the survivors of battle and their families, and supports the aims of the enemy. Translated into immigration or national defense policy, it is an invitation to the world to destroy our country.

Yet, this Vietnam-era idŽe fixe about the military, despite 40-plus years of proof to the contrary, is understandable when analyzed in the context of the flower children's religious zealotry.

To renounce their military fictions would mean facing bigger, more important truths: Marxism doesn't work. Love is not all you need. Western culture is worth defending because it protects freedom, tolerance and the greatest material good for the greatest number. Government can't solve every problem. The American taxpayer has no obligation to support the rest of the world's exploding population.

Without the military-industrial complex to blame for humanity's ills, the lefty loonies lose their basis for faith in a socialist utopia. Terrorism is tortuous for them only because it forces them to pursue the political goals that will allow them to redistribute America's wealth by pulling the nation together and relying on the hated military for protection.

Oh, the unfairness of irony.

Thus, lefty loonies deny that terrorists have declared war on America, while insisting that we can win the war through negotiation. They seem to believe the terrorists will spare them because they are nice.

The truth is that there is no way out of our modern warfare dilemmas.

Is it possible to protect non-combatants, given modern weaponry in total war?

Are people who make weapons innocent citizens of their warring governments, or integral non-uniformed soldiers and legitimate targets?

Must we surrender our country to our enemies because our weapons are too terrible to use?

Whose life is more important: the 12-year-old Iraqi firing an Uzi or a soldier from Kentucky?

Which is more sacred: a mosque hiding a weapons cache or a plane of tourists?

Do we want a military strong enough to protect our homeland? Are we willing to pay the price of survival?

It's crucial that we come to terms with war questions because we will have war with Iran and North Korea. It will come down to their children or ours, their soldiers or ours, their countries or ours.

For aging hippies, it's easier to keep blaming old enemies than to confront new ones, especially the young and ruthless. Hating a military-industrial complex is safer and less tiring. It's less complicated -- and less dangerous.

Abstract institutions neither bleed nor shoot back. Demonstrations, marches and sign-carrying don't accomplish much these days, but they are a lot more fun and allow the fiction of activist moral superiority to persist.

Their BAWL (Buddha-Allah-Wicca-Lenin) is better than some old Judeo-Christian God.

In their heart of hearts, lefty loonies do want America to lose in Iraq and every military theater. They want outside enemies to accomplish quickly the demolition of American capitalism, using the violence the lefty loonies are too old, too scared and too well-invested to use.

After all, lefty loonies want their social justice and their pensions, too.

Luckily, no one lives forever. Luckily, there is Generation Jones to take up their slack. America is too great to go down without a fight.

Yet, please be compassionate toward aging, albeit dangerous, erstwhile flower folks. Understand their pain when communism failed. Understand their desire to enforce perfect harmony. Understand their insistence that we love humanity except those in uniforms.

Just don't vote for them in 2008.