Author: Andrew Sullivan

In case you were encouraged by the president's barn-burning speech last night, Bob Shrum just predicted the Dems will retain the House and Senate. So it's over for the Dems. Not since the late great – and equally congenial – Johnny Apple has someone been so wrong so consistently about everything. Nate Silver defends his prediction methods here – he has now upped the chances of a GOP Senate take-over from 15 percent two weeks ago to 22 percent today.

Tyler Cowen, who personally supports gay rights and marriage equality, defends his pessimism:

We learn from John Boswell that high levels of gay tolerance, in antiquity, were followed by a counter-reaction and higher levels of prejudice. … Looking at the overall pattern, I wonder whether many individuals have a natural, innate proclivity to dislike gay men and women and to feel discomfort with the entire idea of homosexuality, bisexuality too of course.  Those preferences are not universal and they can be mediated by positive social forces, but left to their own devices, they will periodically reemerge in strength.

This I don't doubt, if we look at historic cycles long enough, but in the West right now it appears we are in a strong upswing – and the shift in consciousness among gay people themselves – our sense of self-worth – is hard to find in previous history (though not non-existent in short periods in the past – see my anthology on gay marriage throughout history). The support for us from straight people is also, I think, unprecedented since ancient times, when same-sex love was socially approved very differently – essentially through pederasty – and inextricable from profound misogyny. But Tyler's right: the toleration of gay people – like the tenuous existence of liberal society in the West – is the historical exception, not the rule. Theocracy and oppression are now and long have been far more common. Mark Lilla's book, The Stillborn God, is the most recent and profound exploration of this theme I've read.

I do not believe we will ever live in a world without homophobia, nor do I believe it will ever be as easy to be a gay kid as a straight kid, even in the most liberal of societies and cultures, if only because the desire to be like everyone else, to belong, is strong in everyone, but especially among the young. And few adults are as cruel as children. One of the core anti-liberal arguments in Virtually Normal is that politics can and should establish certain basic formal rights, that laws can and do have an effect on social attitudes, but in the end,

politics cannot do the work of life. Even culture cannot do the work of life. Only life can do the work of life.

Politics solves none of the deepest issues of the human condition, which is why I continue to see myself as a classical conservative (with intermittent bursts, in the tradition of Burke, of moral passion about manifest injustice). Politics, in my view, is a necessary evil. As gay people in this time and place, we have to deal with it because we are denied basic rights most others take for granted, and have always taken for granted (like the right to marry). But the real goal is to get past politics to living, to the pain and joy of being gay which is specifically different but humanly indistinguishable from the pain and joy of being straight. In that sense, I'm really not a liberal; I have far too deep a belief in the permanent tragedy of the human condition on earth to believe in the perfectibility of humankind, least of all by the delusions and fantasies of political activity.

I also believe that homophobia will always exist very powerfully among those who fear their own sexual orientation and lash out at those who represent the joy of it. And that it will always exist simply out of hatred, which is, in my Christian view, merely another way of saying sin. Even today, in an era more tolerant than even the last generation could imagine, after a cruel and thoughtles prank against a shy gay student, who, humiliated, killed himself by jumping off a bridge, you can read a blog-post like this one that seems to curse his watery grave. You can witness simply bizarre behavior by public officials against openly gay students.

And the inherent, biologically reproductive uselessness of gay people in our own unions – which I take to be a sign of God's special place for us in the mystery of his Creation – will nonetheless always be subject to the heterosexual human imperative to bring new life into the world, and therefore always liable, especially in times of social stress or dislocation, to be constantly attacked, demeaned and belittled, even by those who claim to represent caritas. (I think of this Pope's phrase "intrinsically disordered" toward "an objective moral evil" to describe his fellow humans, something one simply cannot imagine Jesus of Nazareth ever saying of anyone.)

And I am speaking of those few of us in the West in my lifetime, a minuscule fraction of those gay people living now in great pain and fear and torment, let alone of the countless lives forced through the millennia to forgo the one thing that makes life worth living for so many – the love of one person for another, sacramentalized through sex, celebrated through friendship, forged by something heterosexuals have long called "home." I am not therefore in any way complacent about toleration, or its permanence, just grateful that in our day and age we have done something, gotten somewhere, and made something out of the ashes of those who never got to be here with us or see any of this.

In the end, I think you have to accept, the way that many Jews have had to accept, that we gays will always be hated more than most. But our task is not to abolish hate (as if that were possible – hence my repugnance at the sheer liberal hubris of "hate crime laws"); or to hate back; or to pretend we can create an impregnable fortress of separateness or "queerness" that will always protect us; or to act out; or to hate ourselves. But to reach an equanimity that both relishes and rejoices in our difference, while never forgetting our sameness. This is not easy. But life isn't, is it?

But it still is – must be – worth living. And this, I suppose, is what I call my faith.

(Photo: the public hanging of two gay teens in Iran in 2007.)

Even now, Michigan AG Mike Cox cannot bring himself to fire the crazed, stalking bigot, assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell for "conduct unbecoming a state employee." Earlier reports said Shirvell had been fired. Not true. And Cox reserved his anger for governor Granholm, who said she would have fired Shirvell:

"I don't know why she's so freaking irresponsible. … She went to Harvard Law School," Cox said. "The civil service rules are a huge shield for free speech, and she knows that."

Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly offer an unconvincing defense of their article. Elbridge Colby doesn't think Pletka and Donnelly's approach to military spending can be considered conservative:

Of course there is no single "conservative" foreign and defense policy. But there are certain fundamentals of a conservative approach, fundamentals consistent with a conservative approach to domestic policy or the law or social life. Condensed, the conservative approach is animated by a deep sensibility for and humility in the face of the limits of what can be achieved by government and other organs of social rationality; by the central importance — but difficulty — of preserving and advancing liberty, order, prosperity, and good values in a complex and imperfect world; by an awareness of the often unpredictable dangers of excessive ambition; and by a profound sense that government is the servant of the people's interests, and thus should never risk its citizens' lives or resources lightly.

The Pletka and Donnelly article does not stem from these principles.

Which is why neoconservatism is now and long has been an oxymoron. And why it has failed so spectacularly. Most violent leftist utopianisms do.

A reader writes:

You asked, "Is this really a wise use of tax dollars?"

The problem with advanced research is that not every goal is necessarily important just because of the goal, but because what's created on the route to the goal.

For instance, it was an amazing foreign policy coup to go to the moon, but even without that incentive it still would have been worth it. Not because of the benefit of having some moon rocks, and not because of the joy of seeing two people bounce around in low gravity, but because the incredible technological feats that needed to be performed to get there. We went to space, and along the way we got Velcro and a hundred other inventions. We wanted to crack the Enigma code, and we got the modern computer. DARPA wanted information networks that could withstand a nuclear attack, and we got the internet.

Are we going to have flying cars? Probably not. But I bet you that some of that technology is going to make commercial flying cheaper or more economically efficient (the car will need to be very light and get a lot out of what little fuel it can carry). It might lead to new materials, or better auto-piloting software. Or we might get some random new gadget, purely by accident.

Another writes:

I can't imagine a more awesome use for tax dollars!  Who the hell cares about roads, BECAUSE WE HAVE FLYING HUMVEES, BITCHES!

Yes he did! And a hell of a lot more. My take on the president's quite remarkable speech to Gen44 last night is here. This mid-term election is not over yet if he keeps this up.

And other saner, fiscally conservative Republicans (previous Dish Mitch gushes here here, and here):

Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana who I think is most likely to win the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 2012, is the spiritual leader. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is the rising star. Jeb Bush is the eminence. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rob Portman, a Senate candidate in Ohio, also fit the mold.

These are people who can happily spend hours in the budget weeds looking for efficiencies. They’re being assisted by budget experts from the Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute and freelancers like Bob Grady, who did budgeting in George H.W. Bush’s administration. Members of the caucus have a similar sense of the role history has assigned them. “This state had a party for 10 years and I’m the guy who got called in to clean up the mess,” Christie says.

Well, we can hope, can't we? But Daniels as most likely to win in 2012? And "spiritual"? My coffee just came out my nose. Still, we like Christie too. More Dish discussion of his record here.

The Obama administration and McDonald's are pushing back against this WSJ article, "McDonald's May Drop Health Plan." E.D.Kain does some math:

I went over to the Kaiser Family Foundation to take a look at what I might qualify for under the healthcare law if I were a single McDonald’s worker (using 2014 dollars). Generously assuming I’d make $10/hour (I believe shift managers make about $9.81/hour) I calculate my yearly salary at $20,800 – or about 181% of poverty.

Turns out I’ll be on the hook for a premium of about $1127 a year, or about $21 per week. That’s $11 less a week than I’d pay for McDonald’s mini-med benefits. But instead of yearly maximum benefit of $10,000 I’d have no maximum benefit at all since maximum benefits are no longer legal. And I’d only have a maximum out-of-pocket expense of $2,083. This plan – a ‘silver’ plan under the new law – is going to be quite a lot better than McDonald’s …

A reader writes:

The real problem with the pledge is not the requirement for citing specific constitutional authority. In fact, Congress already does this quite regularly.  For instance, in Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Congress, beginning at page 317 and continuing through page 321, sets forth extensive reasons why the law is a necessary and proper exercise of its power to regulate interstate commerce. The GOP wants people to believe that Congress passed health care reform without thinking about its constitutionality, when in fact, it did the exact opposite.  This typical GOP disingenuousness is the real problem.

Another writes:

This is already the rule in the House of Representatives for all its committees.  It has had neither the effects of its supporters or opponents. See the bottom left corner of page 26 in this PDF document.

Another:

The pledge to attach a Constitutional "seal of approval" on all proposed legislation may not be dangerous, but it will certainly bring legislation to a screeching halt.

You have to keep in mind that more than a few candidates who will be elected this year believe that certain Constitutional amendments are actually unconstitutional. Also remember that many of these people believe that the current President was elected unconstitutionally and therefore any legislation he signs or vetoes and any wartime actions are also unconstitutional (and even if the first were true, the latter still would be false).

So let's look at this for what it really is: an easy way for the GOP to do nothing in the next two years – thereby avoiding Obama's veto pen, hoping things continue to tank economically so they have a shot in 12, all under the cover of "protecting the Constitution."

Ben Smith has the scoop on two massive donations to the Republican party by News Corp, parent company of Fox News:

News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress, a source close to the company told POLITICO. It was the second $1 million contribution the company has made this election cycle to a GOP-aligned group. In late June it gave that amount to the Republican Governors Association.

The Chamber is the second biggest funder of ads this political season, and in the past, media companies, including News Corp, have divided their donations to both parties.

(Full disclosure: I write a weekly column for News Corp's Sunday Times of London; and as an employee of the Atlantic, this needs to be disclosed as well. Neither the Times nor the Atlantic have ever pressured me to alter my opinions in any way whatsoever.)