The Day After

Rod Dreher muses:

Would I be more depressed to wake up on the day after Election Day 2008 to find that the GOP had lost badly, or had pulled out a surprising victory? I’m not sure, but my gut tells me that real reform of the sort I’d like to see in the conservative movement is far more likely to come from a Democratic blowout than a Republican hanging-on-by-the-fingernails decent showing.

Unless Clinton is the alternative, I’m hoping for a blow-out. It’s the only way to rescue conservatism from the current Republicans.

Quote for the Day II

"I was recently asked to speak at a Catholic college at a symposium on science and religion… I discovered that I had been assigned the title Science Enriching Faith. In spite of my initial qualms, the more I thought about the title, the more rationale I could see for it. The need to believe in a divine intelligence without direct evidence is, for better or worse, a fundamental component of many people’s psyches. I do not think we will rid humanity of religious faith any more than we will rid humanity of romantic love or many of the irrational but fundamental aspects of human cognition … they are no less real and perhaps no less worthy of some celebration when we consider our humanity," – Lawrence Krauss debating Richard Dawkins, at Scientific American.

Land’s End

Duskcommercial

A reader writes:

Me and the wife got a chance to visit PTown for the first time last week. As someone who’s lived somewhere on the California coast all my life (I now live in Los Angeles), I was until last week completely unfamiliar with The Cape, except for descriptions of the place from your seasonal blogging. What a fantastic little town! Picturesque, bucolic yet sophisticated, rich history, friendly people. Consider yourself fortunate to be able to spend a few months out of the year in such a great place. The two highlights for me were:

1. looking accross the bay and seeing how the land narrows and curls to the lighthouse at the end, feeling like I’m looking at the tip of the Country; and

2. seeing John Waters struggle past me on a bicycle on Commercial Street.

I only wish I asked you or Zagat’s for a recommendation of a good breakfast place before we arrived. The meal at the post office cafe’ was awful.

Er, yes. The new restaurant hit of the season is Frappo66, wherein Steve Frappolli provides gourmet food to-go, in a cafeteria-style student union setting. It’s in the Art House right in the center of town. Best regular food: Cafe Heaven. Best high end food: Devons, Edwige, Red Inn, the Mews. Just my two cents. Best fresh seafood: Clem and Ursie’s or Mojos. Best delis: Angel Foods, Far Land. Best sandwiches and cupcakes: Relish in the far West End. Best liquor store: Perry’s. So good to be back.

Mugged By Realism

Another blogger rethinks the notion of democracy promotion in foreign policy:

In all seriousness, I used to be very sympathetic with this foreign policy vision. But no more. I’m tired of hearing about Woodrow Wilson’s idealism, and I’m really tired of hearing about Harry Truman. Frankly, Democrats – and America more generally – would be better off abandoning idealistic democracy promotion as a foreign policy goal altogether. That’s not so much because the abstract idea is bad, it’s that attempting to implement it causes more harm than good in the real world.

…The bigger picture here is that the values we hold dear would be better promoted by recognizing the sovereignty and legitimacy of existing regimes for foreign policy purposes and then working from there. This isn’t necessarily a hard-and-fast rule to be universally applied, more like a strong presumption. For instance, we shouldn’t recognize a corrupt regime the day after a coup d’etat of a legitimate government. But in general, we should recognize those with power and work within that framework to promote our values. Sometimes this is a tough pill to swallow, but such is life.