You know that feeling when the doctor tells you what it is you have, and even though you're not a doctor, his words resonate and seem to take on background music and your very body seems to tell you, "Yes! That's it. This guy's got it right!"

The battle between "Then" and "Now" is one I can join on either side. When the "Now" crowd gets too strident about women being chattel then and blacks being second-class citizens back then I might jump in and point out that back then we never locked our front doors and we left the unlocked car sitting by the curb with the keys in the ignition. When the "Then" people get too rhapsodic about the utter absence of drugs and the breath-taking rarity of teen pregnancy in the good old days I might jump in and spotlight the wonders of modern medicine and cellphones.

There's one area of now-versus-then that broke through into the headlines in mid-2008 that should bring all argument to a halt followed by deep meditation on the part of all who love America and want to defend it.