Somebody called Zac Morgan at David Frum’s New Majority site berates Rachel Maddow for daring to make jokes about the rumors that the Obama administration is trying to drop the phrase “Global War on Terror.” This is no laughing matter, says Mr Morgan:

Maddow snarked about inaccurate reports that President Obama had changed the name of the Global War on Terrorism to “overseas contingency operations”, or as she found it delightfully amusing to call it “OCO”. In all the giddiness about etymology, one almost forgot the seriousness of the threat of global terrorism.

Mr Morgan, a former Bush administration political appointee, goes on to remind his readers of the terrifyingly global nature of global terror threat, pointing to Iran, Pakistan, Somalia and North Korea. He concludes:

We remain in the Global War on Terrorism. Or the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Or the Global Battle Against Man-Made Disasters. Whatever we call it, it is real, and on the way to becoming the new majority, we should never hesitate to face this reality.

Never forget and be afraid. That’s the message of the young warriors who may well eventually build the next GOP majority. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and the price of the eternal vigilance is eternal humorlessness. Just you wait till the next 9/11, then we’ll see who is laughing.

Oh dear. Maddow’s problem, Zac, is that not that her taste in jokes is inappropriate; it’s just that she isn’t terribly funny. I’m all with her, though, when she mocks GWOT, OCO, or whatever other euphemistic misnomers the White House cooks up to justify its military misadventures.

These “New Majority” fellows are strange. For all their look-at-how-reasonable-we-are earnestness–we don’t mind gay marriage; we think global warming is real; we need to change the political Right’s tone– their outlook seems distressingly familiar to the nasty old GOP when it comes to foreign policy. Never forget and be afraid.