Month: June 2007

Poseur Alert

"It is creative intuition that permits both the artist and the viewer to leap over logic, whether scientific or artistic, and emotionally experience the problem laid out here of reconciling the "wet" domain of nature with the "dry" domain of electronics."

Actually, it’s a big blob that produces water when you stroke it. Looks a little like the South Park clitoris to me.

Is this the winning 2007 Poseur Alert? Don’t Forget To Vote Here!

Hillary’s “Botox”

Not so much. Just so the Democrats understand, this is nothing compared to the avalanche of anti-Hillary trivia and bile that will be unleashed if she gets the nomination. It may not be fair, but it’s a reality. If the Democrats want to save the Republican right, if they want to reboot the entire VRWC, they know what to do. Support Clinton.

“JPod Punditry”

Greg lets it rip:

It’s all so neo-con play-book 101, isn’t it? Problem is, it’s kindergarten fare, and totally removed from complex reality. It’s airily aspirational Trotsky meets Partisan Review meets Scoop Jackson meets I don’t like Arabs much meets faux national greatness let’s (unconvincingly) play pretend I’ve got the biggest cojones on the block. It’s utopic, hugely under-informed travesty masquerading as convincing policy. Time to (more decisively) throw out the old playbook, I guess, and get real. Sooner rather than later. More failed states could be around the corner, after all … the clock’s ticking.

Let’s hope JPod retains his sense of humor.

Has She Come Undone?

I can dream, can’t I? For the record, Clinton’s last two appearances were, to my mind, the best I’ve ever seen her. She was almost luminescent at last night’s faith-off, and more approachable than Obama. I don’t think it’s all Botox. The blogosphere, meanwhile, is absorbing the latest polls. Joe Gandelman thinks that Clinton’s "inevitability" advantage is over. Jonathan Singer gets the core data right, I think:

I am interested to see that a trend that I’ve been watching a little while – Democrats breaking towards Clinton, Independents breaking more towards Obama – seems to be holding, at least if this Gallup poll is to be believed. Polling in recent weeks from both The Pew Research Center and The Cook Political Report seem to show this trend as well.

McCain? It may be that Romney is distracting him from more important matters:

Even if McCain utterly crushed Romney underfoot and won over all his supporters, he’d still come in second.  John? Pay attention to Rudy. Pay attention to Fred. Mitt is not your #1 problem.

Don’t take the Hewitt bait.

The Politics of Faith

A reader writes:

I enjoyed reading your take on last night’s Democratic "faith-off." I know you enjoy it when others come around to your way of thinking, but in this case I must admit that I’m enjoying you coming around to mine.  I’ve long felt that the left’s approach was as theocratic as the Right’s, although they were generally careful to label it something else. I don’t think Bush Tcscover has brought religion into politics, but he has removed the veil from it, first from his own party and now, by reaction, from the Democrats. It has always been about whose moral values would win out, and in each case those values are based upon faith, even if not by that name. (Even such secular areas as environmentalism are based in faith: that nature should be preserved, that the natural state is better, etc.).

Your book ("The Conservative Soul") sees the danger clearly coming from the right but you’ve missed it from the left. Either one would make a cruel and tyranical ruler. For that very reason I am very grateful that the founders of this nation saw fit to fill the Constitution with checks and balances designed to limit through tension the natural instincts and behaviors of men. The right can’t ever pull very far ahead because of the left, and vice versa. The annoying battles that we see take place in Washington are there by design and they serve us well.

I have never been very worried about your "Christianism" for this very reason. Sure, a dictatorship of such "Christianists" would be very bad, but not only does the Constitution forbid it but also the opposition, which would provide an equally loathesome dictatorship itself.

Yes, and no. I have a long record of opposing faith-based politics of the left. Of course, it has not always been explicitly Christian. The use of the state to coerce politically correct, i.e. morally righteous, thinking was, in many ways, my main obsession in the 1990s. I opposed all of it, from hate crime laws to "blank slate" social policy. There’s a reason the gay left disliked me. "Virtually Normal" is an attempt to wrest the argument for gay equality from the left. It’s a case for gay equality, but also a polemic against well-meaning, big-government liberalism. The reason my attention turned to the right in the new millennium is because they were in power and turned out to be even worse than the liberals before them, in their readiness to use government to save souls. My lodestars are limited government, individual freedom, and the fundamental understanding that the world will never be a much better place than it is today because of the actions of any government. The key is avoiding the damage that utopianism can bring and the certainties and delusions that a faith-based politics encourages – whether on the religious right or the religious left.

And, yes, the Constitution is the ultimate bulwark against both temptations. Which is why it remains, for me, the greatest small-c conservative achievement of the West. And it is also why I tend to get very exercized when people mess with it.