War & Peace Quote by Ann Coulter

Coulter’s line is less an argument than a dare: it reframes post-9/11 “war on fundamentalism” as a loyalty test designed to make dissent look like cowardice. The phrasing “we’ve finally given” casts conservatives (and by extension the national security state) as benefactors handing liberals the moral cause they supposedly crave. It’s a neat inversion: the people stereotyped as relativists are accused of refusing moral clarity when it arrives, gift-wrapped as war.

The subtext is the real payload. “They would, except...” turns liberal opposition into pure spite, suggesting their politics are driven not by skepticism about policy, civilian cost, or blowback, but by an allergic reaction to being aligned with the United States. That’s a classic Coulter maneuver: collapse a complex coalition (anti-war liberals, civil libertarians, realists, leftists) into a single caricature whose motives are petty and performative. It also smuggles in a premise: that the conflict is straightforwardly “against fundamentalism,” a sweeping label that conveniently scrubs away distinctions between terrorism, regimes, and faith itself.

Context matters because the joke has teeth only in a moment when patriotism is currency and dissent is suspect. In the early War on Terror atmosphere, “same side as the United States” isn’t neutral description; it’s an implied moral high ground, with refusal read as self-exile. The line works rhetorically because it weaponizes social identity: to disagree isn’t to debate strategy, it’s to reveal you’re not really “with us.” The wit is barbed, but the purpose is disciplinary.