The Rude Pundit provides us with this link to selections from Lynne Cheney’s erotic masterpiece, Sisters: The Novel of a Strong and Beautiful Woman Who Broke All the Rules of the American Frontier. So sin-sodden am I that I wasn’t at all offended by these excerpts. But then I wasn’t offended by James Webb’s novels either.

Nor was I offended when I heard Webb speak at a 1985 conference of The Asia Society on “The Vietnam Experience in American Literature.” The conference brought together such writers and editors as William Broyles, Asa Baber, C.D.B. Bryan, John Del Vecchio, Nan Talese, Osborn Elliot, Joe Klein, Ron Kovic, Myra McPherson, Kevin Buckley, Tim O’Brien, and Wallace Terry.

As well as James Webb, who at the time was an assistant secretary of defense in Reagan’s Pentagon. In that crowd, he was the Christian and we were the lions.

Webb didn’t give an inch in the hostile questioning that followed his speech. Politely, intelligently, and with quiet dignity, he defended a war that most of his audience loathed.

Like most everyone else I didn’t agree with him. But I admired him. I wasn’t surprised when he later quit his job with Reagan; nor when he eventually became a Democrat. If you live in Virginia, I urge you to help send him to the Senate. It desperately needs him, and more like him.