Nation-Building

An interesting meta-debate by intellectual conservatives over conservatism's future is playing out. It started with David Frum's Waterloo essay, which led to his political excommunication. Julian Sanchez observed that this represented an epistemic closing of the conservative mind , a thesis that was validated by the retribution visited upon Jim Manzi for daring to suggest that conservatives will achieve more persuasion by using honest, strong arguments instead of weak, emotional ones. All of this has led John Quiggin at Crooked Timber to argue most wisely that as conservatism implodes, liberalism needs to find its own rationale that is more than just "not conservatism". Quiggin has a list of priorities for the liberal movement to address, and closes with the general plea, ...the left has to stand for something more than keeping the existing order afloat with incremental improvements. We need to offer the hope of a better world as an alternative to the angry tribali...

Today, Massachusetts votes for a Senator to replace Ted Kennedy in a special election scheduled on the eve of President Obama's first anniversary in office. The expectation is, to put it bluntly, that Republican challenger Scott Brown will probably defeat incumbent Martha Coakley (who was appointed to fill the empty seat after Sen. Kennedy's passing last winter). The immediate impact of a Coakley loss would be to reduce the Democratic coalition by one, from a filibuster-proof 60 to merely 59. The thinking goes that this imperils President Obama's entire governing agenda, kills health care reform, and is a preview of further losses this November (where the Dems are already expected to lose seats in both the House and the Senate). The spin from the right is that a Coakley defeat is a victory for the oppressed masses who reject Obama's socialist agenda and vindication of the Tea Party movement. But a Brown victory is more likely to come from depressed Democratic turnout, ...

This is the text and word cloud of the speech by Sarah Palin while in Hong Kong on September 23rd, for the CLSA Pacific Markets Conference. Note the dominant topic (in the cloud) in her speech is obvious, and hardly a surprise given the context and locale of the speech. You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we'll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism... Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual. We don't believe that human nature is perfectible; we're suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it's trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn't mean that we're resigned to any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving fo...

The reaction to the murder of George Tiller from the pro-life community is mostly one of horror and condemnation - but there is a substantial minority who aren't quite as interested in principle so much as vengeance. Some of the raw emotion and hatred lurking beneath the surface erupted into public, ugly view on Twitter, where pro-lifers thought nothing of praising the death of "Tiller the Killer" and tagging their posts #tcot . There's also a lot of chatter about Tiller's murderer "performing a late-term abortion" - a moral equivalence argument intended to blunt criticism. But the lunacy is not just confined to the Twitter fringe. World Net Daily, a mainstream conservative forum, is running a poll with some truly disturbing results - I just took a screenshot and with 2264 votes, a shocking 16% approve of the "baby killer being brought to justice", praising Tiller's murderer as a "righteous hero" or applauding the fact that the...

I am a liberal, but I am quite enthusiastic about the idea of The Next Right , because liberalism and conservatism are both essential strains within the American body politic. I remember when RedState was launched many years ago and I was equally enthusiastic, though at the time there was far less consensus that there was something wrong on the Right. Since then RedState has come to epitomize all that is wrong with the Right and I think that The Next Right, in particular because of the people who are behind it, might be the right thing at the right time. I interpret conservatism, broadly speaking, as the struggle to liberate men from the tyranny of the state. liberalism might then be interpreted as an extension of conservatism, the struggle to liberate men from the tyranny of economics. Where both sides go wrong is in forgetting that the pther is also necessary - we must be free of the State's interference from our lives, but we also cannot countenance on a moral level the attitud...

WFB Jr. has passed away at the age of 82. Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office. To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.” In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.” “You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said. “And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something diff...

now they're calling Obama a commie jew bastard. Or more specifically, a " half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby " and yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier -- also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper ...

I was forwarded this by a reliably leftist progressive acquaintance. Do you think that Barack Obama is going to fight for the common man, or will he - like every other candidate in the race - be beholden to corporate interests? Well, guess who is the number one recipient of campaign funds from the following industries: computer and Internet companies, commercial banks, health professionals, health services and HMOs, hospitals and nursing homes, lawyers and law firms, miscellaneous health care interests, pharmaceutical and health product producers, securities and investment interests (groups with serious cash), and television, movie, and music companies? If you guessed Hillary Clinton, you're right! Guess who's in second place? A man by the name of Barack Obama. If you think that BO is going to work for the common good of the common man, you may be a moron. I assume the text above is excerpted from the counterpunch link appended , though I've no stomach to really click...

I usually don't pay much attention to my Starbucks TWISIs (though I do occasionally document the ones I receive on my twitter ). Today's triple venti latte, though, had quite an interesting TWISI on it, which I found highly relevant to the political drama of the times. The author? George F. Will, "Pulitzer-Prize winning author and columnist" (the cup reminds us helpfully). The topic? "true" conservatives. (and, of course, liberals, because how else do they define themselves?). Here's what TWISI #258 says: Because true conservatives are pessimists, they are happier than liberals, for three reasons. First, pessimists are rarely surprised. Second, when they are wrong they are delighted to be so. Third, pessimists do not put their faith in princes - in government. They understand that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. Happiness is an activity ; it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness. Deep thoughts indeed. I am fascinated by the compul...

The Obama-Clinton horserace on the left seems headed towards fabled " brokered convention" status which has long been the holy grail of preesidential punditry (though in practice, is hardly worth cheering for its anti-democratic nature ). But in many ways the dynamic on the right is more important, since the very future of the Republican Party itself is at stake. The main issue is whether "conservatives" are truly a movement or just another faction within the GOP coalition. Prior to Romney's dropping out of the race, the view among the party elite was that McCain's ascendancy represented raw political expediency over genuinely conservative ideals - witness this roundtable between contributors at RedState.com where despite a few voices to the contrary, the mainstream answers affirmatively he question, " did the primary process fail conservatives? ". However, Josh Trevino's comments after Romney's withdrawal strikes rather deeply at the p...