Last night, in an undisclosed but secure location, all three of this blog's writers assembled and held the first Classical Values summit.

(Which is another way of saying that Dennis, Justin and I got together to drink beer and watch DVDs.)

After the first DVD, I realized that we wouldn't make it through another entire film, and it occurred to me that we might watch a very short film -- a film within a film, really. I just got hold of the DVD version of "The Battle of Britain" and the first five minutes shows the prelude -- in which the Nazis smash effortlessly through French defenses (or is that an oxymoron?). I jokingly said that if we watched "The Battle of France," that it would only take a few minutes and then we could adjourn the summit.

Whether it's historically accurate even to refer to the near-total rout as the "Battle of France" is questionable, as Churchill made clear in his speech at the time:

What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin.

Naturally, deep and disturbing questions arose as we watched the crazy English launch their hasty, ill-conceived plan.

Considering that virtually all of Europe was now part of the new Nazi order of things, wasn't this unilateralism irresponsible? How could it ever be expected to lead to anything but a quagmire, and more death?

Why didn't Britain realize that war can never be the answer?

Can it really be said that Europe was better off without Hitler? Isn't that an oversimplification?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, or anti-French. After all, had it not been for France, we'd have never had the Normandy invasion.

Or Vietnam.