"This is not a ship of war... this is a ship of Peace..."

I watched the last night of the Republican National Convention. I've basically spent the past several hours looking at my computer screen, staring at the first sentence of this blog entry. I just didn't find that much to write about, and that in itself is very telling.

• Generally, that speech just wasn't well written or well delivered. I know McCain doesn't have great public speaking skills, and has always been defined by his personal beliefs, rather than his oratory skills. But the acceptance speech of the presidential nominee was really weak.
• The crowd at the convention center didn't find much to go with either.
• The best part of the speech was more emotive than oratory -- his description of how his POW experience changed his life, and sparked his great love for his country. As I've written before, this is very compelling.
• His speech contained the word "fight" way too much. I'm stealing someone's words here (and can't find them for a link) but McCain's Stand and Fight, in my mind, pales in comparison to Obama's Hope and Change.
• McCain can't get around the fact that he is Republican, and the Republicans have run the show for the past 8 years, and they did a horrible job of finding anything positive to say about that time period. I mean, surely, there has to be SOMETHING they can stand on other then the Surge.

Which brings me to the title of my post.

It's from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The one where the predecessor of the Enterprise comes through a "hole in time" and totally screws up history, and changes the Enterprise into a warship carrying troops to war against the Klingons. Whoopie Goldberg's character, Guinan (who has the ability to detect the changes in time) goes to Captain Picard and tells him that things are all wrong, and that the war shouldn't be happening, and in fact, the Enterprise should be carrying families instead of troops.

Picard increduously replies, "Families?!?  Guinan, we're at WAR!!"

To which Guinan says, "This war shouldn't be happening... this isn't a ship of war... this is a ship of Peace!!"

I know, too much Star Trek.

But I do feel that much of the Republican "sense of identity" is based on War, and the only selling point I have heard for the party is war, war and more war. There has to be something else.