[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Once again, it's the politics of fear. This time, it's Zell Miller talking about how desperately afraid he is.

And like you, I ask: Which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.

There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future, and that man's name is George W. Bush.

And that sounds very noble, at first, if you don't think about it too hard. It sounds like a man who's making hard choices. But it doesn't hold up under scrutiny, really, does it? He's saying that he will do anything, including turning on the Democratic Party that gave him a Senate seat, in order to keep his family from harm. (Miller was appointed by the Democratic Governor of Georgia to fill a vacant seat; he owes his current seat to his former party rather than to the voters.) He doesn't care what it takes; he wants his family safe. At any cost. He's chosen safety over freedom.

And yeah, it sounds noble. Unless, maybe, you think about the families who have paid the price to protect Zell Miller. A thousand Americans dead; 6,500 Americans wounded. So what he's saying is that he trusts Bush to keep his kids safe, at the cost of sending someone else's children to Iraq -- and he's too numbed by danger to remember that Iraq was never a threat to his children. That Iraq had no WMD. That Iraq was controlled by sanctions.

This is what fear breeds: men who will do anything, however immoral or unwise, to keep their families safe.