I have a few ideas of my own, Mr. President.

The "smartest President ever" really keeps saying stupid stuff.

"Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas — a more attractive, more compelling vision," he said.

What? Huh? It's like the President hasn't really progressed platitudes from the Freshman Late Night Dorm Room Bull-Session. When confronted with hateful evil ideologies, our ideas are better than guns? I can't decide if this is incredibly dumb, incredibly naive, or incredibly dangerous. It may be all three.

If I was a snarky Air Force armorer/ground crewman, I'd start labeling the bombs "better idea."

I might disagree with Obama's strategy for defeating ISIS, but I haven't really heard anything beyond vanilla platitudes that mean absolutely nothing, and are in some cases just dumb.

I mean, what is this baloney about ideas defeating other ideas? Are we talking about the "marketplace of ideas" like we're in an election against ISIS or something, and maybe the better candidate will get more votes? Because ISIS isn't running for office. They're killing people in barbaric ways because they enjoy it, and/or they think some twisted God requires it, and Obama wants to run a negative advertising campaign. You can't blame him, I guess. It worked against Romney.

You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. You're not going to defeat ISIS by hosting a debate and convincing them of anything. The thing is, Obama just isn't serious about fighting ISIS. He doesn't want to do it. However, he's politically forced to pay lip-service to the idea of fighting ISIS, because he doesn't have a better idea of his own. So we get silly little fortune-cookie wisdom from the Commander-in-Chief.

Let's recap some minor conflicts where men with guns defeated some bad ideas:

1. Slavery and the Civil War: Close to home, here in South Carolina we have a distinct memory of General Sherman defeating the ideology of the Confederate States of America by burning everything in his path from Atlanta to Savannah. Also, Gettysburg and Vicksburg are good examples of men with guns killing other men with guns and the result was the destruction of the idea of rebellion.

2. Naziism and WWII: Remember that time that Hitler and the Germans got the idea that they were going to take over Europe and probably the rest of the world? You do? Oh, then you also probably recall how we defeated them with our better ideas. Specifically our ideas involved sending thousands of men to Europe with guns and shooting them and bombing them back to the stone age. It worked out that our idea beat their idea.
 

You know what really discredits ideologies? Accepting their unconditional surrender, occupying their capital, laying waste to their cities, and defeating their armies. That's a pretty good template.

It worked for the Romans at Carthage, the Greeks at Salamis, the British at Waterloo, and the Federals at Gettysburg. It even worked pretty well for the ol' rag-tag Continental Army one Christmas at Trenton, NJ.

Maybe we should just give that a try after the negative advertising campaign. Just an idea...