If we equate this offense (and it is an offense) with a full-blown attack involving forced sex, then don't we run into the problem of the equation working the direction?

Who wants to tell the victim of an actual attack that (minus a few details) the crime committed against her is the same as the crime committed in this case?

Sex through fraud should be illegal, but calling it rape diminishes the real thing.

Of Israel's many problems, one of them is on display here in these pages. Anyone who questions the motivations or actions of the government of Israel (or even, as in Tolan's case, merely suggests that one could question), is immediately assailed with charges or insinuations of being an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew.

But the fact is that Israel is a real state existing in the real world. Real states behave cynically and ruthlessly, frequently with callous disregard for the rights of those who stand in the way of policy.

This is the way that real states act. And to suggest that the Israeli government has always stood above such nastiness, always conducting itself with unimpeachable ethics and nobility, should be clearly ridiculous.

But no. To suggest that the Israeli government has not always been above such nastiness opens up a critic to the charges of being an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew. It's for this same reason (among others) that we see so many policy-makers and candidates for office falling over each other to show the world how pro-Israel they are.

This climate of fearful, obsequious pandering results in a situation that is detrimental not only to the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors, but also to Israel itself.

Israel cannot survive as a spoiled, adolescent nation. Just as small, vulnerable children can't be sheltered by their parents for the rest of their lives, small vulnerable states need to be allowed to grow up, learn from their mistakes, take a drubbing every now and then, and figure out how to make their way in the world.

Call me a self-hating Jew if you like. But remember that patriotism is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel-- and Jewish scoundrels are not exempt.

David: Where in my post do I cheer the 'Phillistines?' Your sloganeering is precisely the kind of behavior that prevents any sort of real debate about Israel's future.

David: "Jew-hating Jew?' Very nice. Please, please call me a Nazi next. No one's ever called me that, and it would really make my day.

RealName: 'Clinical and classical definition?' I love that you use this term. It makes you sound like such an expert.

In any event, gentlemen, thank you for your comments about my post; they serve as a better validation of its argument than I could have made myself.

Are you okay?

... and me, by extension.

Now allow me to return the favor by trying to save you personally and, perhaps, our people by extension, by offering a little advice:

Please settle down. Going off on a hysterical rant is not the answer, regardless of what the question is.

RealName has managed to write some measured, thoughtful posts on the subject at hand. And, despite the fact that I clearly disagree with some of his positions and even directed a little jab at him, he has still retained a decent level of civility and decorum.

You can do the same; and it would probably do you some good, too.

I'm signing off for tonight. The last word is yours.

As much as I loved this article, it runs into the same issue you'll find with any discussion of the so-called national character.

If you want to write a piece about how we Americans are provincial, lazy and complacent, you'll be able to find plenty of examples for it and have no trouble making a good, consistent argument. But the next day you could write an otherwise identical article supporting the idea that we are innovative, daring and adventurous.

Both articles would be correct, of course, but neither would be complete. A complete description of the 'real' national character, would have to include every contradiction that we represent and encompass as a people. Mercifully, no writer has a long enough life span to accomplish such a work, and no reader has a long enough life span to read it.

The virtuous doubt that Mr. Birkenhead addresses should be applied to notions of who and what we are as Americans and what our role in the world is or should be. As the chickens of the current administration come home to roost, it's somewhat heartenting to recognize that its own attempts to pin down our character into tidy slogans and aphorisms was successful for only a few years. As shameful as our national conduct has been over that time, our contradictions and complexity may have saved us, made us too big and unruly to stay in the little box that Mr. Bush had prepared for us.