Good grief. Barack Obama repeatedly says, as progressives must, that history — make that History — has an inevitable trajectory toward sunny uplands and will eliminate many bad things. Perhaps it will, eventually, but we live in the here and now, where we must answer this question: Is America’s duty-bound role to be history’s armed accelerant?

Yes, Graham answers, because Arabs, too, are eligible for “the American value set.” And, he adds, Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” is inadequate to the stormy present because “there can be no peace with radical Islam.” So, the “box” Graham wants it put in is a coffin.

Graham is equally provoking and more convincing regarding domestic policy, warning that “the way the American Dream dies is we fail to self-correct.” He forthrightly says something indubitably true and, given the distempers of the Republican nominating electorate, semi-suicidal: The retirement of more than 70 million baby boomers by 2030 means that the nation needs immigrants — to replenish the workforce — as much as they need America.