text: In our system of government, the president is traditionally afforded much more latitude for discretion and unilateral authority in dealing with national security issues than we permit him in other arenas. This, I think, is quite proper. Precisely for this reason, however, decent people should start to squirm when expressions of frustration with the inability of our democratic process to reach the "correct" conclusion on key public policy issues come to coexist with assertions that matters such as childhood obesity, climate change, health care, education policy, and government debt are "national security" challenges. We should be wary when our government approaches that intellectual frontier. As the old mariners' maps used to put it, there be dragons.