Warrior Dreams explains how the gun culture relates to the absense of a clear delineation between good and evil in this post-modern era. It also challenges the common belief that we lost in Vietnam because we didn't fully commit -- which Gibson proposes is a convenient lie to justify modern militarism. I've always been an anti-gun-control Original Intenter, though my steadfastness has been getting thin. This book has given me more to think about.

It is with that compound caveat that I offer the following few comments challenging some points it makes. I do this not to be contrary, but because I think that the book paints an overly negative picture, one that was not justified at the time it was written, but especially is not now. I realize I can do this with hindsight that Gibson did not have. But I know I would have had the same conclusions at the time he wrote the book. Leftists tend to be negative about our culture's redeemability. I am more of a utopian. And I worry that Gibson's take on a few things feeds that negative view. So, here are a few key challenges to the bleak picture that Gibson paints.

While there are plenty of stories that fit the New War model, there are plenty that don't. In his desire to make a neat academic argument, Gibson glosses over differences and misrepresents works (probably accidentally) to make them fit the mold. The glaring example of this is …

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