Author: Andrew Sullivan

TNC compares bans on interracial marriage to prohibitions against same-sex marriage:

Banning interracial marriage meant that most black people could not marry outside of their race. This was morally indefensible, but very different than a total exclusion of gays from the institution of marriage. Throughout much of America, gays are effectively banned from marrying, not simply certain types of people, but any another compatible partner period. …

A more compelling analogy would be a law barring blacks, not from marrying other whites, but effectively from marrying anyone at all. In fact we have just such an analogy. In the antebellum South, the marriages of the vast majority of African-Americans, much like gays today, held no legal standing. Slavery is obviously, itself, a problem–but abolitionists often, and accurately, noted that among its most heinous features was its utter disrespect for the families of the enslaved. Likewise, systemic homophobia is, itself, a problem–but among its most heinous features is its utter disrespect for the families formed by gays and lesbians. Of course African-Americans, gay and straight, in 1810 lacked many other rights that gays, of all colors, today enjoy. Thus, to state the obvious, being born gay is not the same as being born a slave. But the fact is that in 1810, the vast majority of African-Americans–much like the vast majority of gays in 2010–lacked the ability to legally marry.

(Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty)

"I think you're on to why the 'Tea Party' was created, i.e. to give conservatives a way to rally with the Republican brand name in ruins, nothing more. They're the Altria of politics," – A commenter at TPM.

Because, regardless of whether you agree or disagree, he's being intellectually honest about the debt and entitlements, even if he is far too utopian in seeing a viable political majority for his vision. And because he seems unafraid to put real, adult fiscal conservatism to the people:

Ryan said he does not think that voters would punish the GOP for shunning attack politics and for speaking plainly about the country's problems. He notes his own political success: He won reelection in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote despite coming from a district and a state that voted for Obama.

"It's really important, I think, not to run campaigns on some vague platitudes and rip down the other party, to hopefully win an election by default," he said. "You have to win an election by acclamation, by aspiration, by telling people who you are and what you are going to do, and then go do it once you get there."

If the GOP wins the House, as I assume they will, Ryan really will become a critical figure, it seems to me. He'll be the Chairman of the Budget Committee – and one of six members of the president's Debt Commission. If he can resist the enormous partisan pressure against bipartisan compromise and intellectual honesty, he will be the unlikely hinge in one of the most critical moments in American economic and fiscal history.

Can Ryan keep his nerve?

And does Obama have the integrity to force the Democrats to get real on Medicare as well?

And can they form an alliance against the reactionary wings in both parties?

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

"Much of Indian (and any other metaphysics) is little more than an ingenious postponement of the stage when the philosopher has to admit that he does not know what he is talking about: and since what he is talking about is God Almighty, this admission is never altogether a surprise," – Aubrey Menen, "The Ramayana"

$3 trillion; the end of America's moral authority in wartime; the empowerment of Iran and Pakistan; the deaths of hundreds of thousands; the wounds of countless more. Joe Klein elucidates the impact of an ideology on America and the world:

The replacement notion that it was our right and responsibility to rid Iraq of a terrible dictator–after the original casus belli of weapons of mass destruction evaporated–is a neo-colonialist obscenity. The fact that Bush apologists still trot out his "Forward Freedom Agenda" as an example of American idealism is a delusional farce. The "Freedom Agenda" brought us a Hamas government in Gaza, after a Palestinian election that no one but the Bush Administration wanted. It brought the empowerment of Hizballah in Lebanon. It raised the hopes of reformers across the region, soon dashed when the Bush Administration retreated, realizing that the probable outcome of democracy in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be the installation of Islamist parties that might prove more repressive than the dictatorships they replaced. Freedom may well be "God's gift to humanity," as Bush intoned regularly, radiating a simple-minded piety that never reflected another of God's greatest gifts–the ability to doubt, to think difficult thoughts and weigh conflicting options with clarity and subtlety. But I'm pretty sure God never designated the United States to impose that freedom violently upon others.

And, yes, a mea culpa, because Joe is an intellectually honest man, unlike so many who did far more to create this catastrophe and even now express no regret, no introspection, no sense of tragedy or responsibility – just the neoconservative formula of never explaining and never apologizing, but moving on and on to the next war and the next:

As for myself, I deeply regret that once, on television in the days before the war, I reluctantly but foolishly said that going ahead with the invasion might be the right thing to do. I was far more skeptical, and equivocal, in print–I never wrote in favor of the war and repeatedly raised the problems that would accompany it–but skepticism and equivocation were an insufficient reaction, too. In retrospect, the issue then was as clear cut as it is now. It demanded a clarity that I failed to summon. The essential principle is immutable: We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.

(Photo: Umm Omar holds a rifle as her son plays with it at their house in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on July 30, 2010. By Azhar Shallal/AFP/Getty.)

Joyner makes a critical distinction:

Am I embarrassed by some people who call themselves “conservatives”?  You betcha.  Am I embarrassed to call myself a “conservative.”  No.

My feelings entirely.

Goldblog gets the tragic irony of the ADL's position. Joe Lieberman follows the ugly pack.

Maputo, Mozambique, 1.30 pm

And one might have hoped that a new owner taking it into the new era might a) have a plan and b) be younger than 91.