Bent Notes

eharmonycom settles a lawsuit by agreeing to post homosexual profiles.

So much for free markets, respect for individuals’ moral codes, the definition of family that served humankind quite well for 10.000 years and still serves all other species well, and sanity generally.

You have to ask yourself why the person bringing the lawsuit didn’t take the entrepreneurial route and set up a matchmaking site for those who see things his way.

Freedom is dying before our eyes without so much as a whimper.

I haven’t had much to say about where I stand regarding benefit of the doubt for the president-elect.  Certainly it’s on my mind a lot.  There’s no shortage of column space in this world devoted to the subject, that’s for sure. 

After much swirling around of my thoughts and feelings on the matter, I’ve landed on something pretty close to what Michael Medved comes up with in his Townhall.com piece today.  Barack Obama remains, in my estimation, a hardcore leftwinger with truly frightening policy proclivities and a majority of personality traits that I find off-putting if not disgusting.  That said, there is no alternative universe to run to.  He will take the oath of office on January 20.  He is assembling his administration in the most precarious time I have personally ever witnessed.  It would be foolish to wish him anything but the best - the most refined judgement he can muster,  and the most favorable circumstances fate can bestow.

The unfortunate quality of Medved’s let’s-hold-off-and-see-what-he-puts-in-place stance is that, given the dizzying pace with which economic and security-related events are unfolding, as well as the aggressiveness with which Obama is pursuing his vision, it becomes more superceded hourly by developments that we must decry as alarming.

Today’s Wall Street Journal is full of articles, columns and editorial comment that make plain the madness of the FHer regime’s approach.  Everything about it is the exact opposite of a real remedy for the ills of the day.  On page A8, for instance, is a story about how the regulatory machine is gearing up.  Top Obama aide Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, crows that the “agenda is going to be bold.”  “Activists” will run the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and the Department of Labor.

One can see it coming, like the next stage of a cancer:  The very measures that have damaged and possibly killed our domestic auto industry - unsustainable UAW contracts, CAFE standards - are just the beginning of what the new regime wants to impose on the (formerly) Big Three.  The editorial page of today’s WSJ features a required-reading alarm bell entitled “The Environmental Motor Company.”

Let’s continue to extend the benefit of the doubt where we can as much as we can, but let’s also plainly state things that become clear.  One is the fact that the new administration is going to distort the notion of private ownership of business, base policy on a sham scientific concept (climate change), and seize more of citizens’ assets to pay for it.  This, at a time when the economy is screaming for people to be able to keep more of what they are earning.

The American public voted for this to transpire.  That may be the most disorientingly irrational aspect of our current juncture.  These are not times to expect encouragement for proceeding in a sane and rigorously reasoned way.  The kudos in post-modern America go to those who conduct their affairs in the opposite manner.

The Montana senator gets explicit about where the general FHer approach to health care was headed.

Look for more Politburo members to feel similarly empowered now that we’ve entered the age of Hope and Change.

Little Green Footballs, a blog I check at least daily and hold in the highest regard, links to David Frum’s statements about some choices the GOP will have to make about where its center of gravity will be.  True to his east-coast chin-rubbing orientation, Frum says the Pubs would be well-advised to make the “painful choices” in favor of sticking with fiscal and foreign-policy focus and cut the social conservatives loose.  LGF pretty much concurs, saying that “fundamental Christianity, creationism, hard-line anti-abortionism and [an] aggressively anti-gay rights [stance]” will be detrimental.

Let’s not be applying a broad brush where a freshly sharpened scalpel  - or, if you’d like, a microscope - is needed as we unpack this observation.

Perhaps this is the opportunity for true clear-thinkers to take back a perfectly good word that cultural leftists had co-opted: nuance.

Frum’s not a complete goner.  He’s somewhat infected with east-coast pointy-head-ism, but he has made some insightful contributions and he’s no Reasonable Gentleman (our term here at BN for Pubs who appease the left).  He does seem here, though, to be channeling his inner David Brooks, saying that a permanently less religious and more pragmatic young adult American is a foregone conclusion.

Even if the fanciest studies in the world bore this out, it would be a devil’s bargain on our part to proceed in accordance with it.  The God revealed in the world’s great scripture (you can interpret that as broadly or narrowly as you’d like; for my part I’m excluding the Quran) must be central to the shaping of any kind of conservatism we get behind.

Now, that said, let’s look at where Frum and LGF do indeed have a point.  In our image-driven post-modern culture there is no denying the power of stereotypes that form in the mind of the citizenry.  Simply put, cornball yee-haw-ism will get us nowhere.  I was listening to Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday and he was attempting to bouy listeners’ spirits by exhorting them to come out to his Freedom Concert tour.  He excitedly listed the lineup, headlined by Lee Greenwood (have I ever stated for the record that I hate that “God Bless the USA” song nearly as badly as I hate John Lennon’s “Imagine”?) and Charlie Daniels.  Sorry, Sean, but that ain’t gonna cut it.  These are people who, while their hearts and minds are admirably inclined, do not generally put a super-fine point on the above-mentioned matters.

And a fine point is required.  Let’s give our scalpel a fresh sharpening and proceed. 

We’re always correct about everything here at BN, and we say unequivocally that abortion is wrong.  We also say that the phenomenon of homosexuality is some kind of  - brace yourselves, this is going to take a little digesting - crippling of normal, natural human sexuality.

What is unfortunate and leads to the kinds of pronouncements Frum and LGF are making is the undeniable fact that quite legitimate conservative problems with such matters as abortion and the treatment of homosexuality as normal does get mixed up with the wacko stuff like creationism and fundamentalism in general.  The radio show after mine on Saturday mornings is all about creationism.  A lot of the host’s guests are very commendable pro-life activists, but they serve the show’s agenda of saying that our culture’s devaluation of life has its roots in an embrace of evolution.

We have to take our internal debate to this level of exactitude, people.  For one thing, we began to see as this year unfolded indications of some demographic types that fly under the radar screen - rock and rollers, distinguished actors, a playwright or two and even the odd (I’ll be the first to admit it) jazz and blues guitarist and arts journalist like your present blogger - that want a place at the table of conservatism.  They will be turned offto some degree by either snobbery or yee-haw-ism.

I’m not saying anyone I’ve mentioned in this entire post should be denied such a place at the table.  All I say is, come prepared to sort this out with as much courage, clarity and comity as you can muster.

I’d like to say a litle more about “well-duh” punditry.  What amazes me is that this drivel is coming from our supposedly sharpest minds.  Even a perusal of the venues that have been my lifeline for years in post-modern America - NRO, Townhall, Real Clear Politics - yields these offerings of a tepid brew of cautious congratulation, nerdy examination of demographic and voting trends going back to 1912, vapid portrayals of America’s essence, and the invevitable mentions of the need for a new generation of conservative leaders.  Talk about blah blah blah.

The fact is that what all you chin-rubbing, number-crunching broadly American beacons of eruditon were fearing mortally in your hearts three days ago has come to pass.

“Maybe Obama will govern more from the center, in keeping with his rhetoric after the primaries were over.   After all, he will be hemmed in by economic challenges.”  My ass.

Get a clue.  Not only has he been chomping at the bit for this moment for decades, so have Reid, Pelosi, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, Jim Moran, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Murtha, and a fired-up FHer base whose organizations will now be more financially and psychologically empowered than ever.

That’s what makes me cringe when I read these columns and blog posts by the main spokespeople for my side that spend the first paragraph spewing that “historic moment” dog vomit.  Let Katie Couric handle that obligatory observation.  Yeah, yeah, the guy’s black.  Well, dig this: I don’t give a flip about his color, except insofar as he does, and on that score I’m not too encouraged.  But more importantly I’m concerned about his power to turn a recession into an economic train wreck, the mortal danger he will put this country in with his patty-cake approach to foreign policy, and the effect his own narcissism will have on a postmodern American culture already way too driven by that adolescent character trait.

So count me out of the group hug.  I’m still interested in what I’ve always been interested in: our freedom.

It’s early afternoon.  There’s still this resolve to see things optimistically on the part of my people, both personal friends with whom I’m in touch as well as the boggers I’m reading and the talk-radio hosts I’m listening to.

The situation in Philadelphia - Black Panthers blocking a polling place - is getting a lot of attention right now.

Part of me is emotionally exhausted and part of me is on fire.  It’s weird to be host creature to both states simultaneously.

I only knew one person in the line at my polling place, an artist buddy of mine whom I know to be a consistent FHer voter.  It was so weird to make small talk with him about what’s going on around town musically, and then watch him get behind the machine, knowing full well what he was doing, what buttons he was pushing.

At the risk of sounding like some therapist’s patient, I am wondering what I do with this thought I harbor whenever I come in contact with someone who I know full well voted the FHer ticket.  There’s a lot of someones in that category - social friends, professional associates, relatives.  The inescapable fact is that there is some level on which they are the enemy.  These are people who have taken a concrete action which jeopardizes my freedom and my future.  So, as I say, wht do I do?  I can’t jettison the lot of them and re-people my life. Plus, most of them are nice, even wonderful, if horrifyingly misguided, folks.

I know one thing.  Whether Mr. Reasonable Gentleman can squeak through, or whether the Chicago Marxist emerges victorious, there must be a from-the-ground-up reassessment of how to get conservatism to flourish again.

The first principle by which we must be guided is zero tolerance for anything less than total clarity. No McCain-esque distractions and vacuous platitudes about “fighting the status quo in Washington” or “fighting for what’s right for America” or “putting country first.”  Such crap means nothing.  An FHer could utter the same phrases.  Indeed, the Chicago Marxist does employ very similar rhetoric.  No, what we talk about are the specific principles for which we’re willing to fight to the death: the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, free-market economics, American exceptionalism, an America that does not hesitate to respond fiercely and ruthlessly to its enemies’ provocations, and America that demonstrates unwavering loyalty to nations that share these principles, the primacy of family as the basic unit of human organization, and a culture characterized by dignity, depth, decency and real inspiration.

We must expect loud arguments amongst ourselves, finger-pointing and bitterness.  Obviously, the wheels came off our movement and we must find out why.  This is why we’d all be well-advised to enter into this foundational examination with as much prayerfulness and mindfulness of our common aims as possible.  Eventually, the the useless sand of confusion will get sifted out and the nuggets of what we were seeking will be all that remains on the fine-mesh screen.

I look back at this year - my personal successes, some episodes of illness in our household and family, memorable times with friends, the spring’s tornadoes and floods, the spike in gas prices, the financial meltdown, the embrace by a frighteningly large segment of the population of socialism - and ask myself what it all has taught me.  I’d say that the biggest lesson at this point is that, in human life, the visceral and the spiritual are inextricably intertwined.  In fact, I’m sort of considering the possibility that the more one progresses on the spiritual journey, the more reality’s upside-the-head aspect becomes impossible to avoid.

 . . . for strongly condemning what’s been going on in Toledo, which is a foretaste of the Stasi-like means of dealing with those who dare to exercise their constitutional freedoms that we can expect once the FHers institute one-party rule.

It’s a marvelous autumn Sunday morning - colors nearly at their peak. I’ve had a great weekend so far.  Great gig Friday night with Carolyn, my violinist collaborator.  We added some new tunes, got lots of positive response from the crowd.  did a great radio show Saturday morning.  Took Mrs. BN to the airport yesterday afternoon, then went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a while, then went downtown in Indy for some beers and wings.

It’s just noon and I’ve already written in my journal, gone to the gym (chest, arms and cardio) and church, and now I have some Sunday-dinner chicken in the oven.

I must be pretty good at compartmentalizing, because I am grateful for and gratified by all these things, but I also still feel that undercurrent of nausea and doom I’ve mentioned in some recent posts.

At the gym, I caught a bit of McCain’s appearance on Chris Wallace’s show on Fox News.  The dread I felt duting the primaries is back full force.  This guy is beyond lame.  In a response to Chris’s question about whether he has become too focused on attacking THe Chicago Marxist for the Ayers connection, he drools the same lame, meaningless, harmful sputum about “reaching across the aisle,” “Americans hurting,” and “getting the economy back on track.” Nothing about how The Chicago Marxist’s tax policy, financial-meltdown policy, energy policy and health-care policy are completely to be expected given that his views were shaped by the likes of Ayers, Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” and Democrat immersion in general.  No a word.

Then there’s the fairly-official leaking of probable cabinet choices, basically the same lineup Bob Beckel predicted and to which I linked a few posts ago.  A Who’s Who of defeat and socialism.

Then there’s the Colin Powell endorsement.  Of course, we always knew he was from the same mush-head wing of the GOP that gave us W and McCain, the wing utterly lacking in any kind of consistent worldview or set of core principles.  Nice people with good hearts all, but, and I mean this will the utmost seriousness, ultimately intellectual lightweights.  Hell, Powell comes right out and says that more conservative appointments to the Supreme Cout would bother him.

As I say, I must be good at compartmentalizing.  Or maybe I’m just savoring these final days of the normal, free, prosperous American life I’ve experienced for fifty-three years.  My fridge is full, as is my inbox for writing assignments.  Some good gigs on the calendar.  Time to savor the moment.  A year from now - no, I can’t go there.  Not on this gorgeous Sunday.  I just can’t.

During the primary season, when it looked increasingly likely that John McCain would be the GOP nominee, it was hard not to despair.  Except for the never-in-the-running Ron Paul, none of the candidates was further away from a consistent and robust conservative vision.  Where is a succinct defense of human freedom, American exceptionalism and common sense going to come from, we howled into the darkness.

Once he was nominated, things didn’t improve until that late Friday morning in Dayton when Barracuda made her national debut.

She was, and remains, a repository for our principles, values and passions, but it quickly became clear that her persona was too fraught with particulars for the focus on her to remain on the level of ideas.

I’ve - and I know I speak for millions of us - have been walking around in a state of combined numbness and nausea for the last few weeks as McCain has proceeded true to form.  Lame debate performances, poisonously harmful crud about how “you wouldn’t have to be afraid of an Obama presidency,” a muddied message on the roots of the current economic mess.  When I could muster up enough hope to pray, it would be for some vessel from which to dispense the conservative message with unmistakable and instantly appealing clarity to any and all Americans still capable of actual thought and mature reasoning.

He came along this week.  It started with his question to The Chicago Marxist about raising taxes, which pointed up in less than fifty words the naked socialism of what TCM’splan is about more forcefully than all the blog posts devoted to the subject here and at hundreds of other freedom-loving sites.  Then came his round of appearances on various MSM outlets yesterday in which he got the chance to share his - our - views on a few other subjects, such as immigration.

Then this morning came Biden’s inevitable attack.  What’s the applicable word here?  Arrogance doesn’t do it justice, nor does hubris.  What’s the proper way to characterize the mockery of someone who stands up for the right to keep his own hard-earned money rather than turn it over to the government for the furthering of totalitarianism?

We know just enough about Joe.  He’s healthy fit, smart, articulate, good at what he does, and ambitious.  If ever there was a public figure, which he now is, about whom family arrangements, tastes in food sports or music, mode of transportation, or even level of formal education was not relevant to the thunderous undeniability of what he said that made him famous, it’s Joe the Plumber.

He wants the America we’ve had for 230 years, not a socialist dictatorship.

Again, a figure perfectly suited to populist rallying has emerged to give John McCain yet one more shot at, as Rush puts it, “being dragged over the finish line.”

That these out-of-nowhere lifelines keep appearing despite McCain’s indifference to the only vision that can prevent the end of the American experiment I take as evidence of a God who is indeed on our side.

I think all of us recall our parents saying, in response to our trotting-out of evidence that we were the only ones among our peers who wouldn’t be participating in some social activity, “I don’t care if all the twelve-year-olds in the world are going to be doing it; you’re not.”  The underlying message was that majority opinion about the merit of something has nothing to do with whether it makes sense or is good from a moral standpoint.

I think about this not only terms of poll numbers showing the relative appeal of our two major parties or two major persidential candidates, but also an assumption I get tossed at me in conversations with left-leaners, either in person or in BN discussion threads. 

It’s actually rather amusing to see this looks-like-your-people-are-getting-their-commeuppance stance interjected into the current state of affairs.  “Republicans are about to get hammered because the people want a change after eight years of what they’ve been handed.”  It’s a bit like they’re assuming you had a stake in a particular pop singer making it to the American Idol finals when a little real observation would have shown that you were rooting for the warbler of arias.

The irony is that, in terms of the words being uttered, there is complete agreement.  Absolutely, if the Pubs get hammered, they have themselves to blame.  The departure lies in why each side thinks this is so.  What the left-leaners mean by this is that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, the Patriot Act was a heavy-handed intrusion into privacy, the unchecked free market widened the gap between haves and have-nots and so on.  No, if the Pubs get trounced, it will be because they indulged in pork-barrel spending as flagrantly as the FHers, let the State Department turn our foreign policy into mush, didn’t insist  on up-or-down votes for judicial nominees, and let our borders continue to be sieves.

To paraphrase dear old mom and dad, it doesn’t matter if the entire population behaves like lemmings and goes over the cliff, free markets, a foreign policy based on an understanding of history, and fealty to Greco-Roman / Judeo-Christian values and principles are always right, and departure from these approaches is always wrong.

Yes, it’s wonderful when you get elected leaders like Dutch and Newt - and, to use current examples, Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence - who stand for these things, and we constantly fight to bring that about, but the political brand name more closely associated with them being in bad shape has nothing to do with whether we’ll keep affirming them.

If John McCain beats Barack Obama, freedom’s prospects will only be marginally better.  We’ll still have big-time work cut out for us.  We’ll still be choking on that “green” hooey, and kiss-it-and-make-it-well schemes like the Treasury Secretary directly buying up bad morgages.  “Comprehensive” immigration policy. 

In fact, about all we could count on in the way of sensible positions would be low taxes and resolve toward our enemies.  So, yes, when push comes to shove, it is , however incrementally, better if Pubs do well.  They are capable of responding to wake-up calls, as opposed to FHers, with whom it’s just fine if it all goes to hell, as long as they have power.

We’re - I mean conservatives - not going anywhere.  We’re not in decline, our vision isn’t diluted or distorted, and our energy isn’t sapped.  What makes sense and what is right doesn’t change.  We’ll continue to live accordingly and work at persuading our fellows to do likewise.

The task is just a little more daunting if The FHers make a totalitarian police state out of the country.

Have you noticed the meme being puked on command by the Chicago Marxist’s camp all day today whenever asked about the Ayers connection?  It’s instantly “I think the American people want to talk about the big issues, whether they’ll be able to keep their jobs and houses and retirement accounts.”

Th paraphrase the Chicago Marxist, a leader must be able to focus on a few things at a time.  We can examine his freedom-hating career and life and still obliterate his freedom-hating position on what to do about our current economic situation.

He was buds with Ayers and knew about his past. 

There, that one’s dealt with. 

 His tax hikes on capital gains, corporate earnings and inheritance - and let’s not forget the incomes of people making over $250,000 - would be disastrous. 

And the economic front involves his connections as well.  Frankin Raines, Jim Johnson, ACORN’s bank fairs that were staged to intimidate lending institutions to grant mortgages to unqualified borrowers.

There, that one’s dealt with.

At least here.  Let’s just hope The Maverick gets both messages across this evening.  

More than one person has accused my characterization of Democrats as Freedom-Haters as being over the top and unproductive.  It’s cost me some BN readers and I think even a friendship or two.

Because being liked is rather important to me, I’ve frequently examined my employment of this term, asking myself, “Oh, Jeez, have I burned some bridges I’m going to regret?”  I’ve looked back over the last seventy years of American history, made a point of seeing what FDR and Truman and JFK did right, reminded myself that the party of Jefferson has had in its ranks admirable people of principle - Scoop Jackson, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman - figures who, however misguided on economic policy, understood what American exceptionalism was all about, as well as the spiritual nature of the foundation of the American experiment.  In short, I’ve wanted to cling to some shred of possibility that the modern Democratic party was really just one of the two main American political organizations, the one whose overall orientation I agreed with less of the time than that of the other, but which was nevertheless operating out of good faith.  I wanted to see it as still grown-up, embracing trustworthiness, sanity, bedrock love for America and freedom.  I wanted it to be a legitimate force in modern society.

This year, more than the last twenty-five, has absolutely squelched the last ounce of hope against hope within me.  There is no other conclusion but that the modern Democratic party is indeed the repository of Freedom-Hatred.

When this party can come up with a piece of social engineering like the Community Reinvestment Act (instituted under the Jew-hating utter failure Jimmy Carter) and turn over its implementation to a gang of thugs and intimidation artists like ACORN, with its bank fairs and voeter-registration fraud, and say, as Barney Frank and Maxine Waters did four years ago that they saw no problems with the viability of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and then have the nerve, when the whole thing leads to a financial crisis like our present one, to try and place the blame on “right-wing ideology” and an “unsupervised” free market, we are witnessing a chilling level of deception indeed.

When the monolithically Democrat-voting MSM does nothing to put together the whole picture conveyed by Barack Obama’s trail of thuggery - the attempt to have Missouri law-enforcement silence free speech, the phone-bank flooding of the Chicago radio station on which Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso appeared as guests, clear back to his first run for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, when he directed his volunteers to discredit the legality of incumbent Alice Palmer’s nominating petitions, forcing her off the ballot - the result is that this affable and good-looking Stalinist is positioned with a five-point lead in the race for U.S. president five weeks from election day.

When the Speaker of the House goes to Syria to undermine America’s objectives in the mideast, when the Senate Majority Leader declares a war lost that the U.S. is now on the verge of winning and we are so deadened to evil that we will return them to their posts for another term, we have arrived at a foul scenario indeed.

Someone in the McCain campaign must address the moral level of what’s going on.  We are not dealing with just another bunch of folks who see things a little differently.

At the very least, if McCain can’t find something to say about Obama’s Stalinism, the urgency of low taxes, dismantling Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and winning a decisive victory in the current world war, he needs to shut his stinking mouth about bipartisanship.

Barack Obama, Stalinist thug.  Today, the state of Missouri, tomorrow the entire nation.

The first thing that stood out for me in Joe Biden’s comments about upper-income Americans getting a tax hike was, like it was for most people, his characterization of it being “patriotic.”  As disingenuous Marxist double-speak goes, it wasn’t any too artful.  One needn’t be a genius to see through it.

Since I first heard about it, though, another word from his remarks has been foddr for much of my pondering: “take.”  He said “We’re going to take that money and put it in the pockets of the middle class.”

“Take.”  If ever a word hammered home with zero uncertainty the coercive power of the state, that’s the one. 

Rule of law is perhaps the aspect of our American experiment in liberty that requires the most intellectual refinement to discern clearly.  Yes, we are ruled by laws, not the whims of individuals in particular positions, but by definition law is a construct backed by a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.  That’s why the West’s greatest thinkers on the subject have said that we mut be supremely careful what we etch into law regarding the dos and don’ts of human conduct.  We must not take short-cuts in our consideration of what is just and proper and what maximizes liberty, dignity and individual sovereignty.

The best minds on the case have concluded that a major way in which liberty is maximized is letting people keep nearly all the money they earn or otherwise lawfully acquire.  To receive money in exchange for one’s time / talent / skills and then use that money as one sees fit is at the core of putting an individual in charge of the making of choices and of the right to define well-being as one so chooses.

And, Joe, who is this “we?”  I think we can strip away any grandiose notion of “the American people” and get to the essence of what he’s talking about when we consider this monopoly on power: he means the government.

Biden isn’t the first to use “take” in the context of people and their money this campaign season.  Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton spoke of taking oil company “windfall” profits and establishing a government fund for atlernative-energy development.

The first step in a state moving toward totalitarianism, toward massive restructuring of society, is getting the public used to the idea that taking the most important of a person’s belongings - his capital - is legitimate when used to make circumstances more “equal” and “fair.”

I’m all the time coming ups with topics of speeches or debate remarks that McCain, Palin and GOP congressional candidates ought to use.  A major examination of the implications of this word “take,” it seems to me would be particularly juicy and beneficial at this time.

First there was Michael Steele with his rhetorical device put to excellent use: “Do you put country first?”  And, of course, his phrase “Drill, baby, drill,” which the crowd immediately picked up as a chant and which will no doubt start turning up on tee shirts.

Then there was Mitt Romney, who took off the gloves in a way I’d never seen, and also gave an excellent explanation of what opportunity is and how the government can’t provide it - and how the FHers would squash it.

Then there was Linda Lingle, offering the perspective of a fellow female Republican governor and how she’s come to know Sarah Palin personally and see her character first-hand.

Then there was Rudy, who got right to the heart of the matter and asked why it is that the FHers never once at their convention used the term “Islamic terrorism.”  Of course, he was dynamite on every subject he touched.

And then, as Chris Wallace at Fox and Anderson Cooper at CNN both said afterward, “a star [was] born.”  Governor Palin is now permanently etched in our pantheon of historical figures: fierce defender of primary principles, folk hero, everywoman, and intellect of the first order.

Everything is different now.

The left will have to try some tactic other than the gutter politics of personal destruction, because they hadn’t counted on how it goes when you mess with the Barracuda.  She does what Dutch used to do: she takes her case right to the American people and resonates, big time.

What she’s done has very personal implications.  Take me, for instance.  I’m energized and I see possibility in ways I haven’t in years. I think freedom and huan dignity and the spread of proseperity have a chance.  That which is supposed to prevail in this universe is doing so.

Let’s roll.

A few more thoughts occur to me along the vein of last night’s post about livingthe life of a closet-rightie. 

Clearly, the majority of my friends and associates are on the other side of the ideological fence from me.  It makes me cringe and gnash my teeth, but I know how they’ll vote in November. 

Most of them get their news and opinion on the fly as they maneuver through their daily lives - a little Today show or The View while on the treadmill at the gym, a little NPR during the daily commute, Time or Newsweek during the grooming-and-hygiene interlude, the op-ed page of their local paper, stuff that friends e-mail to them.

A few of them make a point of, as far as they understand the term, being highly informed.  They regularly check out The Nation, the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews.

It’s this second tier that I’d like to consider here.  After all, they ostensibly have the most meat on the bones of their worldview.  They avail themselves of sources unabashedly self-identified as progressive.

As Bookworm and Neo-neocon say about such people in their lives, it’s clear from my observation of, and interaction with them that they are not dumb people.  Most have done quite well in live.   They live comfortably, travel, send their kids to fine colleges, contribute to the civic life of their communities.  This is why I am so confounded by their steadfast fealty to an ideology that has demonstrated its intrinsic failure in every area of public life: economics, culture, education, religion, and science.

Implicit in their dinner-party exchanges about how to get more Americans concerned about global warming, or how immoral US involvement in Iraq is, or how large corporations are greedy is that core assumption that America’s main identity is not that of a grand experiment in human liberty, but rather some kind of storehouse in which power and wealth exist of their own accord, andthat it’s just a matter of which classes or vested interests are going to control those commodities.

It’s an assumption that really goes back to Marx.  It’s the idea that there’s some kind of power structure that welcomes in those who demonstrate a cynical understanding of how the game works, and excludes those who insist on an egalitarian dispensing of access to the levers of success.  In this view of things, a revolution is required to put the egalitarians in charge of admission to the success network, and send the old power-brokers to the re-education camp.

The irony is that reality works in the exact opposite fashion.  When free-market economics, as laid out by Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman, is combined with a keen understanding of the Judeo-Christian scriptural narrative and all it has to say about family and character and a devotion-filled heart, as well as a keen understanding of what history shows us about human nature and the evolution of the modern nation-state, you get the freest and fairest possible society.

Especially since the civil-rights triumph of forty years ago, there is truly no substantive obstacle to a United States citizen becoming or achieving whatever he or she envisions.  What is it you want to do?  If you equip yourself with a full toolbox of the character traits needed to accomplish it - a generally educated mind, knowledge of your field, a friendly dispostition that fosters a network of contacts, mentors and associates, a willingness to find out what material resources you’ll need, and an understanding that life is fluid and you’ll need to adapt to pretty much constant change - the only hassles that can possibly pose setbacks will be random occurrences of bum luck.

A further irony is that this is how these people I know who are personally successful but still harbor the leftist worldview got where they are.  What i cannot get to the core of - and, I think, still puzzles even conservatism’s greates minds - is why they can’t see the universal applicability of their own success stories.

It has something to do with this matter of control.  I used to divide leftists into two groups - those who sincerely believed that government was needed to make life more fair for unfortunate people, and those who were in it because it was a slick way to talk themselves into power.  I look at it a little differently now.  I think some sense that human beings ought to be controlled lies at the heart of even the do-gooder impulse.  Otherwise, these people would be able to see that they came to their quite favorable junctures- the American dream - without asking anybody’s permission.

Barack Obama’s embarrassed about the number of Americans who don’t know any other language besides English.  Let that sink in.  He’s comparing us to the the Europeans, portraying you and me as rubes and the morally relative, post-Judeo-Christian, dhimmitude-infected citizens of the continent with the fastest-shrinking population on Earth as the sophisticates we should emulate.

The benefits of being multiligual are beside the point.  Of course, it would be advantageous to our society in myriad ways if more of us knew more tongues.  The significance of Obama’s remark, however, is that it must be added to the list that includes his arugula moment in Iowa, his characterization - made in San Francisco - of small-town Midwesterners as religion-and-gun clingers, and his wife’s assertion tha she’d never been proud of her country until her husband’s campaign got going. 

This is what I was talking about in my Independence Day post.  We may be past the tipping point.  We have so decimated the idea of a common culture and a sense of what makes America great that we not only confer legitimacy on an arrogant-yet-empty charlatan like the Marxist From Chicago but we make him a rock star - inded, a messiah.

And the fact that we’ve made messiahs out of our rock stars for decades paved the way for this phenomenon.  When people slobber all over the memory of drunkard and wife beater John Lennon as if he were some man of vision, a prophet of peace, or canonize a polygamist like Bob Marley as some kind of modern-day Moses leading “his people,” whoever they are, out of some kind of imagined bondage, or confer sainthood on cocaine-and-masturbation freak Marvin Gaye just because he recorded the song “What’s Going On,” which, upon examination, is a a defense of urban troublemakers, a condemnation of the US attempt to save South Vietnam from Communism, and an apologetic for long hair on males, we soften ourselves up for a con job with truly serious consequences.

Remember when Michelle Obama said that her husband would require things of us?  Keep that in mind.  He’s already talking about some kind of national service for young adults. He’s already said, in that speech in Oregon, that thermostats set at 72 degrees wouldn’t cut it.  Do you think he was just trying to suggest we become more multilingual?

Have you really focused your powers of envisioning on what a Freedom-Hater monopoly on elected power in Washington would look like?  Who will stop them from wealth redistribution, mandating adherence to junk science, finishing off Christianity and Judaism once and for all, destroying the notion of family that has been the bedrock of Western civilization - indeed, every civilization that’s contributed anything to the world - for thousands of years, marginalizing our native tongue, and establishing a protected status for a privileged class that congratulates itself on its refined tastes and ability to discern nuance?

Of course, such a society could not long survive, especially when its leaders hold manliness and self-preservation in disdain.  A brief period of totalitarian rule would be followed by our conquest by some combination of our external enemies.

I wish I could be light about this, leave it at the level of what’s amusing about it, maybe find something clever or even sardonic about it andthen move on to some interesting distraction.  The thing is, I remember when this country had a chance.

Sometimes something will go very right.  Such is the case with the opening of Baghdad’s pools and parks.

Independence Day finds BN waxing reflective like many another punditry outlet.  The word “paradox” keeps surfacing as the most apt characteristic for the juncture at which this marvelous country finds itself on the 232nd occasion of the signing of Mr. Jefferson’s thunderous document.  Comparatively speaking - compared, that is, to other nations, and to other periods in time - we’re doing great.  We are, however, beset by some unique and unprecedented challenges, some of which ualify as threats requiring a sense of urgency.

I can’t argue with such sunny perspectives as those of Ed Fuelner’s Townhall column, or Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO piece.  Such problems as high oil prices, the mortgage-market upheaval, and even the array of undeniably hostile countries and forces on the world stage aren’t making much of a dent at this moment in our ability to exercise our freedom, enjoy our prosperity, invent, consume, wander, wonder, form and raise families, worship, not worship, become civic leaders or become hermits.  We’re comfortable, secure and free beyond the imaginings of most human beings alive either today or at any time in the past.

To call that the end of the matter, however, is to turn a blind eye to some glaring aspects of everyday life.  We are not okay.

Our most immediate threat is moral and intellectual atrophy.  We no longer have any idea how our circumstances came to be, their real value, or what’s required to preserve them.

The most handy piece of evidence to offer in substantiating this assertion is the Democrat candidate for president: a member of the Senate for three years, an Illinois state senator before that, and a “community organizer” in the mold of the radical Saul Alinsky before that.  His radicalism, his ambivalence (at best) about America’s greatness, his ties to both Marxists and corrupt Chicago-machine figures, his cultural elitism, and his phony religiosity are well enough known that in a country with solid intellectual and moral bearings, he would be an embarrassment with no chance of going past a couple of primary races.

It’s not as if anyone were offering a hopeful alternative, either.  The current administration is apparently going to let Iran build, test and use a nuclear weapon, and let North Korea keep its asernal of same, along with its uranium-enrichment capabilities, and its network for proliferation.  It’s also the bunch that is determined to get Israel to allow a state to a group of people dedicated to its obliteration.  Obama’s opponent in the current race to succeed this administration is a vacuous, tired and stubborn has-been who thinks we shouldn’t drill in ANWR and has a problem with corporate profits over some arbitrary level (at which they become, in his worldview, “obscene”).

Our preoccupation with silly, fabricated non-issues that distract us from what ought to be our real concerns is another manifestation of our atrophy.  When corporations and universities alike rush to form “diversity councils,” when federal judges find “rights” to homosexual “marriage,” when developers rush to build “green” housing units and commercial structures, it is clear our ability to muster rigor and clear-sightedness is slipping away.

When you opened your web browser home page just now, you saw yet another ominous sign of our emaciation.  Where were the headlines dealing with issues of economic challenge, jihadist design or nuclear proliferation?  Well underneath coverage of the attire or the sybaritic antics of celebrities who have no more qualification to be pop-culture icons than Barack Obama has to be a presidential candidate.

Yes, our most pressing problems - after this breakdown of our moral and intellectual health - could be solved fairly easily, but that’s a lot like saying the stroke victim could easily reach the water glass beside his bed.

It’s a fine Fourth.  I’ve seen happy people all over town as I’ve driven and biked about.  I’ll be throwing a T-Bone and a mahi-mahi filet on the grill this evening.  I’m about to pour myself a sparkling cocktail.  Checks are in my mailbox and gigs on my calendar.  I know lots of people who love the one true God and who understand free-market economics.  Somehow, though, it all has the feel of the last tune the orchestra on the Titanic played before dance partners in the ballroom started to say to each other, “Did you feel that?”

The jack-booted totalitarians in charge of the U.S. Senate aren’t even waiting for the Marxist From Chicago to take office.  They’re pushing a bill right now - as in as I type this - on the floor of their utterly degraded chamber - to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies.  Of course, those companies can avoid the tax if they “invest” the “extra” profit in alternative energies.

Get a clue, America, before we’re all hauled off to the re-education camps.