Category: Awards

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them," – Mike Huckabee, comparing my civil marriage to incest.

"Palin's view of nuclear weapons was shaped by her stint as the commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, our first line of defense against Soviet nuclear weapons. Obama has held his same views since he was a stoner college student and has showed no signs of maturing. Which of the two would you trust?" – Confederate Yankee.

Tongue in cheek, John Cole wonders if it is "possible that all of these blogs we’ve been reading and laughing at are all elaborate spoofs, and the joke is on us?"

"As much as I am in favor of reducing the size and cost of the state (and doing so sharpish), the current mess is not going to be sorted out without some increase in tax receipts — and, no, economic recovery will not by itself be enough quickly enough to do the trick. If we have to increase taxes, that is better achieved by a broad-based tax than heaping yet more levies on individual income," – Andrew Stuttaford, another sane conservative at NRO, with an open mind on the VAT.

One thing occurs to me as I see, for example, where Fareed Zakaria, David Frum, Andrew Stuttaford and myself have migrated in recent years. We were all Thatcherite/Reaganite conservatives of varying stripes in the 1980s. And we all feel, to varying degrees, uncomfortable in modern American conservatism.

What else do we have in common? None of us was born here.

There is something deeply and profoundly American about the current right, its conspiracy theories, its paranoia, its racial issues, its sexual panic, its fundamentalist timbre. Conservatives not from the South or imbued in the cultural legacy of the twentieth century – i.e. those who mistook Buckley for the forces he successfully challenged – remain on a learning curve wit respect to the some core, and especially Southern, factions on the American right.

It is far darker and stranger than many of us ever truly grasped. And it took us a while to realize it.

"Since when have secularists and dissenting Catholics been experts on the protection of children? These self-appointed reformers of the Catholic Church preside over a debased culture that abuses, aborts and corrupts children. That a reckless and depraved liberal elite would set itself up as moral tutor to Pope Benedict XVI is beyond satire. Here we had on display during Holy Week the spectacle of the Vicar of Christ receiving moral instruction from Barabbas. Who turns orphans over to homosexual couples at adoption agencies? Who sends Planned Parenthood propagandists into schools? Who clears the streets of major cities for "gay-pride" parades with the North American Man/Boy Love Association in tow? It is the liberal elite who champion these child-corrupting practices," – George Neumayr, editor of the Catholic World Report.

"I’m not filling out this [census] form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door," – CNN's Erick Erickson, who might have to repent for Kurtz again. And he just got a thrashing from TDS last night.

"Based on his actions and the statements he’s made since climbing onto the world stage three years ago, I’m convinced President Barack Obama would be happy to see Israel and all of its Jewish inhabitants disappear from the surface of the Earth. Truth be told, his posture toward the Jewish State — minus out-and-out calls for Israel’s destruction — seems to mirror that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," – Bob McCarty.

"I think a lot of these people are gold-diggers looking to get money from the Catholic Church and it's only the Catholic church as an institution that is singled out," – Bill Donohue.