North Korea has joined the nuclear club. Sort of at least. We know they can make a nuclear explosion, albeit a little-wittle-bitty one, but we don’t know if they can weaponize such explosions. Nevertheless, this is a milestone of a morning, and not necessarily a bad one since it became inevitable some time ago. To trot out some Churchillian-style rhetoric, it’s not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning. For that, we can all be thankful.

If someone told you that five years after 9/11 one of our major parties would be trying to nationalize congressional elections based on the perversions of one Congressman, you would have thought him insane. You also probably would have thought the party focusing on the guy’s gay sex life would have been the Republicans.

Alas, a scant 24 hours ago my Sunday morning gabfests were forcing me to ponder Mark Foley and salacious Instant Messages while scarfing down my Fruit-Loops. Perhaps we should all be grateful that North Korea has jerked us back to our chillingly dangerous reality.

SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW? Well, we know what the Democratic Party and its media surrogates will want to do – begin a comprehensive and multi-lateral campaign to BLAME BUSH!!! If you think the liberal half of our political dialectic is capable of anything else at this point, you’re living in a state of denial (to coin a phrase). Six years of exclusively relying on a Blame Bush reflex for every event both big and small has allowed the rest of their intellectual musculature to whither. Democratic Party leaders are no more capable of offering a thoughtful analysis of how we should handle the latest North Korea crisis than they are of delivering a scholarly treatise regarding the ovulation cycle of a three-legged llama.

But what about us? What do conservatives have to offer at this moment? How about this – the truth, no matter how disquieting it may be.

First, there’s a piece of good news in that North Korea is an outlier and not bent on global conquest unlike other aspirants to the Nuclear Club. What’s more, the NoKo power structure, in spite of its numerous oddities, cannot be credibly labeled a death cult. While it’s facile to say that it might have been nice if someone had waged a preemptive war against North Korea 12 years ago rather than send Jimmy Carter over to kiss Kim Il Sung’s tush, it happens to be true.

And that’s where North Korea’s little science project this morning can really help us – it can serve as a teachable moment. Lunatics who want to join the nuclear club won’t be easily deterred. We can even count on them getting help from some people whose best interests aren’t served by providing such services. If you think we’re engaging in some serious contemplation this morning, imagine what the Chicoms are going through.

So what’s next? Almost certainly the problem will be referred to the U.N. Security Council where the world’s finest diplomats will try to bore the North Koreans to death. But that won’t work, and neither will any of the other tepid and irresolute courses of inaction likely to emanate from Turtle Bay.

So let’s look what we have in the eye, and really use this moment for some learning. We embarked on a long war five years ago. But the past five years have been similar to England’s Bore War of 1939-1940. Even though England was at war with Germany, business in England went along pretty much as usual.

This has been a similar historic moment for us. Over 2500 magnificent Americans have sacrificed all in our war to date, but at home our lifestyle has been unaffected. There have been no calls to sacrifice, and no outward recognition beyond the first terrifying weeks after 9/11 that this struggle will be a painful one, one that will likely reach all Americans in a personal way before it is done.

North Korea probably doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet, but they’re well on their way. The same can be said for Islamist fanatics who most definitely intend us harm. If this turns out to be the moment that shakes the media, much of our society and one of our major parties from their extended slumber, let us give thanks.

And then let us get on with what has to be done, a cold-hearted and hard-headed implementation of Ronald Reagan’s simple Cold War policy: We win, they lose.

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