Faithful readers might enjoy this commentary by John Feehery, former staffer to Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional Republicans. Feehery pontificates about the prospects for the country now that Al Franken's victory gives the Democrats (at least theoretically) 60 votes in the Senate.

What's so perfect about this commentary is the way it illustrates one of the prime features that got the Republican party to where it is today: its "We're Proud to be Luddites" attitude.

Feehery complains that the Democrats, now that they have attained a Senate supermajority, can be expected to start enacting crazy, left-liberal policies. His prime example? The metric system. It's his first sentence. Dems are going to impose metric the way they tried back in the 1970s.

See, that's what I mean. The metric system is used by the entire world except for the United States (OK, and Liberia and Burma. We're in such good company.) It's won out over the old British system because it is superior. Heck, even Britain doesn't use the British system any more.

Metric is so easy to use. If you go 17,525 meters, how many kilometers is that? Sheesh, it's 17.525. That took about 0 seconds to compute. Now if you go 17,525 feet, how many miles is that? Let's see, 5280 feet in a mile, so we need to divide 17,525 by 5280, so that makes . . . oh, you work it out.

With the whole rest of the world on metric, U.S. companies suffer in international trade. And we even screw up at home, like when NASA lost a Mars orbiter

because of confusion between British and metric units.

Maybe that's why the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, signed by Ronald Reagan, declares that it is the policy of the United States "to designate the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce."

But even though the Republicans' favorite President signed this policy into law, Feehery isn't just against it -- he mocks it. He's proud that the U.S. lags behind the rest of the world in weights and measures. He holds out the metric system as one of those crazy, left-wing notions that the Democrats are just waiting to foist on us.

I doubt that the metric system is really high on the Democrats' agenda. But if it is, it's a good idea. Let's stop being proud of areas in which the U.S. is behind the rest of the world.

Posted by: Jon Siegel