No.

We didn’t get any of that from the largest short term spending package in American history.

Instead, what we got was a huge, unwieldy set of pork barrel projects with no coherent theme to hold it together.  It reminds me of the old Super Bowl Commercial where the crowd of monkeys celebrate blowing several million dollars in a nearly meaningless brand endorsement.

The White House must be held accountable for this error.  Every Republican candidate should be harping on just how unconscionable the stimulus was.

Keynes famously noted that the government could stimulate the economy by dropping money out of helicopters.

Our president and his liberal Congress seem very nearly to have taken the idea to heart.

He is famous for advising the prince that it is important to appear honest, humane, religious, faithful, and charitable, but that it is equally important the prince be ready to abandon any of those attributes when opportunity presents itself.  The prince should not worry about whether he will gain a bad reputation for deception, because, as Machiavelli suggests, there are always ordinary people willing to be deceived and the world is FULL of ordinary people.

The primary thrust of the book is advice about how to gain principalities and to maintain control of them.  Many things work to a prince’s advantage, such as traditions of servitude and customs that reinforce the reign of a prince.  But there is one thing that puts sand in the princely engine and grinds things to a halt.  That thing is a tradition of liberty.  If a people are accustomed to liberty, Machiavelli writes, then they will never stop trying to regain it.  Even if they haven’t had it for a hundred years, the ancestral memory of liberty will be overpoweringly strong.  It may be so strong that no manipulative device of the prince will be able to defeat it and he may have no other option than to destroy such a city.

Might I suggest to you that on Tuesday night we saw Americans in New Jersey and Virginia issue notice that they are not prepared to trade their liberty for hyper-statism and that they are not ready to become Europeans, always more subservient to the state than we have been, instead of free citizens of a great republic?  The tradition of liberty is one of the greatest weapons we have in this struggle.

When William F. Buckley thought about the possible triumph of the United States in the Cold War, he imagined that American children would someday be thankful that “the blood of their fathers ran strong.”  That is the call to us today.  Resist every political blandishment, manipulation, and attempt to render the voices of liberty mute.  Let our blood, too, run strong with the cherished memory of our past and present liberty.

The idea here is that, hey, Medicare works to cover seniors and therefore we could just cover everyone with a Medicare style plan.

This idea, voiced by Laurence O’Donnell who should know better, is not a good one.  Medicare works, to the extent that it does, because it is basically parasitic on the private market for healthcare.  Doctors are able to earn reasonable compensation (given their training, skills, and level of difficulty of the work) because of the existence of that private market.  All Medicare does is to provide a way for a segment of the market, lower income seniors, to pay for healthcare.  Many physicians will accept that reduced payment from Medicare because:

They want to help patients, including those who often can’t pay much

They have the money earned in the private market to allow them to handle the poor payments from Medicare.

Without the private market, can you imagine doctors paying for their substantial overhead (including massive prices for malpractice coverage) on what they make from Medicare alone?  Government solutions work somewhat acceptably at the margins, but not when they overtake the market completely.  Pointing to Medicare is not a way to win the argument for a government option available to everyone.

The argument from misery: I cannot think of any encounter with my government that I willingly seek out.  I hate going to the DMV.  I hate going to the post office.  I hate getting my car inspected.  I hate getting a passport renewed.  All of these things eat up productive time in my day and are filled with useless, inefficient waiting.  This basic situation also applies to people who rely on the government for their healthcare.  When my wife did indigent care in Houston, her clients did not pay for her services.  They paid with their time.  LOTS OF WAITING.  I don’t need more waiting in my life.  And because government employees are typically unionized, I don’t need to be at the mercy of a bunch of unionized employees any more than I already am.

The argument from incentivization: If the government provides the care too cheaply, then there will be a glut of clients who overwhelm the system and create the nightmare of waiting as the price to pay.  If the government offers the care too expensively, people will opt out which is exactly what they wanted to avoid.  If the government tries to control utilization by deciding what services you can and can’t have, then you are up against a far worse foe than the worst HMO you ever faced.  And the government will go where the insurance companies fear to tread.  They will decide who should live or die.

The argument from missing the verdammten point: It is exceedingly clear that a huge reason for the skyrocketing costs of medicine is the problem of predatory litigation driven by lawyers looking for 30-40% of a bloody fortune from an industry thought to be able to afford it.  Between the cost of malpractice insurance, the payouts, and the defensive medicine that must be practiced to ward off lawsuits, it is easy to see why healthcare is outrageously expensive.  Yet, the president very clearly said he would not seek to deal with that problem in the legislation.  WHAT?  WHY?  Because the trial lawyers are very good political donors?  Not a compelling reason for the formation of a particular public policy.

The argument from economic theory: Look at two sectors of the healthcare market that are typically paid out of pocket without the influence of insurance providers or the government.  I am thinking of plastic surgery and lasik procedures for improving eyesight.  Both of those services are becoming less expensive in real dollars rather than skyrocketing out of control.  This happens to be the portion of the healthcare industry where actual market conditions apply.  Customers pay for and receive value at a price that is becoming more reasonable all the time.

We all know the story.  The 1970′s had been hard on America.  We were beginning to look like losers buffetted by economic uncertainty, high inflation and unemployment, the loss of prestige on the international stage, the looming threat of nuclear war . . .

We often point to Ronald Reagan’s election as where it all turned around, but that hockey game at the Olympics, a moment when Americans (college kids, no less) rose to the occasion against all expectations, seemed to be part of a comeback in the public consciousness.

I had a little of the same feeling this morning while listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio interview a guy who was seated on the exit row in the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River.  He described a scene where people didn’t panic, but instead did what they needed to do in an orderly fashion to survive.  Everyone, from the pilot to the crew to the passengers to the ferry operators and other rescuers, worked together to bring life out of a deadly situation.

This is a proud moment.  It comes at a time when we’ve been smacked around by crisis and negativity.  We have had a feeling of looming disaster.  We walk around psychically hunched, braced for a hit.  The actions of everyone involved in the miracle on the Hudson shows that we may be better suited to weather a storm and to rebuild than we thought.

I didn’t have anything to do with this wonderful story, but these people are my countrymen.  I’m standing a little taller on the inside today.  This may be the start of our turnaround.

Our latest action hero has been Jack Reacher, the creation of British television writer Lee Child.  Reacher (always Reacher in the series, never Jack) is an imaginative hero.  He spent the first thirty-five years or so of his life on military bases.  First, as a child of a soldier and then as a top military policeman.  The hook is that Reacher, as a military policeman, is something like a super-cop.  His targets were trained men, often devious, tough fighters without a moral code.

As he aged, he tired of his regimented life, quit the army, and became a wanderer.  Reacher doesn’t even have a suitcase.  He wears a set of clothes until it wears out, buys good quality English walking shoes, and carries an ATM card and a folding toothbrush.  He is something of a cross between Dr. Richard Kimble (The Fugitive) and The Incredible Hulk.  Big, tough, strong, and very street smart.  He moves from place to place and gets involved in situations usually requiring his violent intervention.

All in all, it has been a highly enjoyable series.  The kind of candy I yearned for while working on my dissertation.  Upon finishing, I gorged on the likes of Reacher.

The latest, Nothing to Lose, lost me as a customer.  Lee Child, the author, seems to have REALLY enjoyed the recent works of village atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.  He seems to have enjoyed them so much that he had to come up with a highly improbable plot just to demonstrate how stupid he thinks Christians are.  Oh, and along the way he manages to claim that nothing the American military has done since 1945 has been worth the price of men’s lives.

But Child’s little crusade against conservative protestants and American military efforts of the past sixty years wouldn’t have been enough to send me packing if the book weren’t so bad.  The villain catches Reacher multiple times and somewhat inexplicably lets him go.  The bad guy has a compound.  Reacher spends the entire novel working his way in and out of the compound as he goes between two towns, Hope and Despair.  On the one hand, the villain has put together an incredibly devious and ingenious plan to help bring about the apocalypse.  On the other, Child (through Reacher) assures us that the villain is a weak-minded man who is accustomed to believing things that comfort him.  It is profoundly boring, which is something I have never been remotely close to saying about any of the other books.  It was literally an act of will for me to continue reading Nothing to Lose.  I was determined to finish because I knew it would likely be the last run for Reacher and me.

Now, having finished, I’m sure of it.  It was.

Hunter Baker is an assistant professor of political science at Houston Baptist University. His personal website is www.hunterbaker.wordpress.com. His book The End of Secularism will be published by Crossway in August 2009.

Under the circumstances, I thought now might be a good time to propose a list of outstanding books for the intellectually curious friend or fellow traveler.

I would not dare attempt to put these in order based on excellence.  Just consider it a series of number ones.

1.  Lancelot by Walker Percy — A southern moderate-liberal is slowly fading out of his own life.  He doesn’t know what his purpose is or where his marriage and family are going.  But then, something strange happens.  He discovers there is such a thing as evil.  Percy won the National Book Award for The Moviegoer, but Lancelot is my favorite.

2.  Witness by Whittaker Chambers — Surely, the greatest memoir of any man of the right.  Possibly, the greatest memoir ever.  I once tried to copy out the passages that meant the most to me and ended up just typing in whole pages at a time.  For those too young to know, Chambers was an American traitor loyal to the Communist cause, who left the Communists for what he felt was the losing side.  He had to do it because of his recovered belief in God.  In the course of his life, he became a senior editor of Time magazine and ultimately defeated Alger Hiss in legal battles over Hiss’s identity as a communist agent.  Since Frost/Nixon is hot, you might also know that Richard Nixon’s presidency would likely never have happened without his championing of Chambers’ cause.

3.  Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand — I can’t resist putting Chambers and Rand together, especially since Chambers was the instrument William F. Buckley used to read Rand out of the conservative movement.  As a Christian, I find Rand’s work antithetical to my own sensibilities, but I have to admit its power.  Besides, this is a conservative-libertarian list and she can’t be left off.  On the other hand, as literature, it cannot rank with the greats.  I still remember the moment when John Galt grabs a microphone to speak to the nation . . . and one hundred pages later is wrapping it up!

4.  After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre — This is arguably the finest and most readable piece of political philosophy I have ever encountered.  Anyone who wonders why our political discourse has become so poisonous and incommensurate should read this work.  So, for that matter, should anyone interested in answering John Rawls.  George W. Bush would have known long ago that “the new tone” was destined to fail, if only he’d read his MacIntyre.

5.  Anarchy, Utopia, and the State by Robert Nozick — I’ll make this one simple.  Robert Nozick provides the most convincing case for a minimalist state that I’ve ever seen.  You can break your head on his symbols and formulas, but bear with it because you WILL get it if you keep reading.  Even if you were only to read the short portion where he tells his “tale of the slave” you will be confirmed in your libertarian instincts.

6.  Man and the State by Jacques Maritain — This collection of lectures about the relationship between the individual, the culture, and the state contains the kind of essential thought we wish every politician understood.  Careful, wise, insightful.  You will understand many things better after reading Maritain. If you would like to read political philosophy, but have been afraid to start, this may be your entry point.

7.  Stained Glass by William F. Buckley — William F. Buckley is dead and I don’t feel so good, myself.  However, I am comforted by reading his best works.  This Blackford Oakes heart of the Cold War novel is one of his strongest entries.  You want to see the kind of chess match the Soviets and Americans were playing?  Then, read this Buckley spy novel.

8.  The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer — Would you like to know who was the prince of the Christian conservatives?  It wasn’t Falwell or Robertson.  It was Francis Schaeffer.  The missionary who set up a Swiss Chalet spent years arguing with college students in Europe.  Along the way, he formed a convincing apologetic for the existence of God and the reality of values.  (I am almost required to point out that Schaeffer was wrong in his critique of certain figures.  So, I said it.  Still, this book is great stuff.)

9.  Perelandra by C.S. Lewis — I could have chosen almost any title by C.S. Lewis, so I picked the one that had the greatest emotional impact on me.  Perelandra is the second book of Lewis’s space trilogy (underappreciated next to Narnia).  The story centers around the drama of Adam and Eve being replayed on a new planet with an earthman there to witness it.  Utterly compelling and, of course, full to bursting with philosophical and spiritual meaning.

If you want a really enjoyable and edifying read, I recommend you begin with The Roots of American Order.  That book will give you an understandable and historically grounded sense of what “ordered liberty” means. It will also open the mysteries of Kirk wide to the uninitiated reader.  The prose is lively.  Highly readable.

Kirk is more widely known for the book that made his reputation, The Conservative Mind, but I think The Roots of American Order is a better read for the vast majority of people.

HH: Governor, here’s a contradiction in the book, and I read it very closely. On some places like Page 70, you denounce “yuppie greedheads”. Another place, you’re assaulting the management of Halliburton and Home Depot and Pfizer. And then in another place, you’re palling around at the ranch of Chuck Norris, whose done very well in life, and it’s a very funny chapter, by the way. I wish I’d been there when you were filming this commercial. But when is accumulated wealth okay, and when do you find it a reason to denounce someone like a yuppie greedhead? I mean, what’s the difference between a yuppie greedhead and Chuck Norris?

MH: A couple of fists. That’s the big difference.

HH: (laughing)

MH: Now look…

HH: Oh, you’re good, Governor.

It’s not Iacocca all over again. This bailout will just lead to another bailout.

Here’s how it begins:

As the standard bearer for American conservatism for two decades, Ronald Reagan effortlessly embodied fusionism by uniting Mont Pelerin style libertarians, populist Christians, Burkean conservatives, and national security voters into a devastatingly successful electoral bloc. Today, it is nearly impossible to imagine a candidate winning both New York and Texas, but Reagan and that group of fellow travelers did.

In the meantime, the coalition has begun to show strain as the forces pushing outward exceed those holding it together. The Soviet Union, once so great a threat that Whittaker Chambers felt certain he was switching to the losing side when he began to inform on fellow Communist agents working within the United States, evaporated in what seemed like a period of days in the early 1990s. Suddenly, the ultimate threat of despotic big government eased and companions in arms had the occasion to re-assess their relationship. The review of competing priorities has left former friends moving apart. Perhaps nowhere is the tension greater and more consequential than between the socially conservative elements of the group and devotees of libertarianism.

The two groups have little natural tendency to trust each other when not confronted by a common enemy as in the case of the Cold War. Libertarians simply want to minimize the role of government as much as possible. For them, questions of maintaining strong traditional family units and preserving sexual and/or bioethical mores fall into an unessential realm as far as government is concerned. The government, echoing the thought of John Locke, should primarily occupy itself with providing for physical safety of the person while allowing for the maximum freedom possible for pursuit of self-interest.

Social conservatives similarly view the government as having a primary mission of providing safety, but they also look to the law as a source of moral authority. Man-made law, for them, should seek to be in accord to some degree with divine and natural law. Rifts open wide when social conservatives pursue a public policy agenda designed to prevent divorce, encourage marriage over cohabitation, prevent new understandings of marriage from emerging (e.g. gay marriage or polygamous marriage), prevent avant garde developments in biological experimentation, and a variety of other issues outside (from the libertarian perspective) the true mandate of government that cannot seek to define the good, the right, and the beautiful for a community of individuals. To the degree social conservatives seek to achieve some kind of collective excellence along the lines suggested by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, libertarians see a mirror image of the threat posed by big-government leftists.

You can get the full text here.

I think that theory is out the window.

There is no way rational voters could have looked at the choice offered by John McCain and Barack Obama and concluded that Barack was closer to the ideological center than McCain. Obama had no record of cooperation with Republicans. McCain has passed major legislative packages with Democrats. Obama has never broken with his party other than to go left of his party. McCain has regularly broken with his party to move in with centrist coalitions.

Yet, McCain was beaten soundly.

I suspect that voters are not really rational centrists.

I think voters are highly emotional and I think they are often looking for a narrative they can understand. Barack Obama appealed to both of those things. Disgust with Bush as the author of a long, expensive Iraq adventure that even if effective, feels like castor oil going down. Anger at the economic problems that seem to have no bottom of late. And the narrative, of course, is the candidate of hope. The one who can bring us together, heal wounds, and importantly, who is not a Republican like George W. Bush.

Goodbye bell curve. May political consultants and party bosses everywhere cut you loose.

Imagine a different scenario. There is an evangelical candidate. He is the best evangelical candidate ever. A Rhodes Scholar, a distinguished lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court, astoundingly eloquent, you get the idea. This candidate is a conservative, but answers all questions in such a way as to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. He hits all the right chords.

Further imagine that the record shows this man was once heavily involved with Christian reconstructionists who believe stoning should be re-instituted for adultery. He went to a church for two decades where a Christian reconstructionist preached each Sunday. One of his mentors was part of a group that bombed abortion clinics.

Where would that candidate be right now? And how different would that candidate be in terms of associations from one Barack Obama?

Their only real answer is to embrace classical liberalism. This includes in particular embracing its crucial components of individual rights, personal responsibility, the belief that human life in general and every human life in particular has meaning, and respect for the reality of nationality.

This vision of classical liberalism derives from Edmund Burke and Adam Smith and their contemporaries, and incorporates the insights of subsequent great thinkers such as Booker T. Washington, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Thomas Sowell. It is a vision of a true opportunity society, open to all who agree to play by the rules, and one in which the rules are sovereign.

Such a vision provides a comprehensible, consistent, and sensible view of the world and the nation. In this worldview, the nation is a society of free individuals brought together by a common heritage, living under laws that free people to achieve the best that they can and that prevent them from unfairly exploiting one another, a society that respects the need for personal morality regardless of one’s religious background. Classical liberalism provides a way to find clear answers in all policy matters by asking the following question: Which policy approach will create the greatest amount of both individual liberty and social order?

Believe me, this speech is worth your time. Lifted my spirits right up.

1. For starters, [Obama] supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions that are not necessary to save the life of the mother and are not the result of rape or incest.
2. [Obama] has promised that ”the first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed ”fundamental right” to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy . . .
3. Obama, unlike even many ”pro-choice” legislators, opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice.
4. Appallingly, [Obama] wishes to strip federal funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women in need. There is certainly nothing ”pro-choice” about that.
5. Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama has opposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child.
6. [A]s an Illinois state senator Obama opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist’s unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability.

There is much more in Professor George’s article. He has painstakingly put it all together for anyone who wants to make a decision based on all the information to do so.

Those who approve of free markets will at least get one in the area of abortion if Obama is elected.

Regrettably, the read is scarcely worth the click. Buckley provides a mundane and unconvincing explanation for his desertion of party and candidate. It is as though he couldn’t quite get his heart into it or worse is like a hostage trying to signal with his eyelids that what he’s saying isn’t true. Because Buckley is justly known as a comic author, one wonders whether he is kidding and simply failed to develop a good punch line. Whatever the reason, the result is disappointment. After all, this is the scion sprung from the loins of the founder of National Review, the mightiest political provocateur of his age.

Buckley begins with a bit of cheek regarding his parents, which is off-putting considering that both died recently. The title of the piece is, “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama.” At one point, Buckley joshes that his parents’ passing is fortunate lest they be around to cut off his allowance for betrayal of the family cause. Funny stuff, that. He also acknowledges that the only reason any one would care about how he is voting is because of his last name, which he inherited. So, if the reason for the interest is so poorly founded, why offer this true confession?

The NR shareholder begins by admitting a longtime admiration for John McCain and refers to a column he wrote in The New York Times earlier this year defending McCain against Rush Limbaugh and others. But the author would have us believe things have changed in a period of months and that McCain has gone from being real, unconventional and someone Buckley felt should be president to a temperamental and inauthentic person.

But what about the list of particulars? Buckley has them. For example, John McCain promises to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Buckley finds that indefensible. It is difficult to imagine why such a promise would be so troubling. Both parties maintain the desirability of balancing the budget sooner rather than later. When it happened during the Clinton years it was almost like receiving an unmerited gift from God. He also questions the McCain decision to suspend his campaign to address the financial crisis. Again, the critique is hard to sustain. If anyone in the senate has shown an ability to pass legislation, it is John McCain. Were we to have a hall of fame for senators, McCain would be in it on the basis of his accomplishments. Is it so strange for such a person to feel he needs to actually do his day job during a time of trouble? Meanwhile, Obama stood on the side saying his fellow senators knew where to find him if he could help.

Then, we get to a possible nub of the complaint. Christopher Buckley, like his colleague Kathleen Parker, can’t understand why John McCain chose Sarah Palin. He offers no explanation for his unhappiness with Mrs. Palin. Her faults are supposedly spectacularly apparent. For my part, I am aware of a single edited interview where the vice-presidential nominee is thought to have performed poorly. Based on a full reading of the piece, one could arrive at the conclusion Buckley is dropping McCain in chivalrous defense of Ms. Kathleen Parker who, according to Buckley, received 12,000 nasty emails as a reward for her call for Palin to withdraw.

Before he addresses whatever positive reasons he has for supporting Obama, Buckley offers the following homage to John McCain:

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

I agree with every word of that and wonder why Buckley would wish to contribute in any small way to the occurrence of the tragic event he describes.

As for Obama, Buckley likes his savoir faire and his status as a Harvard man. When I read the bit about Harvard I recalled his father’s famous quip about preferring to be ruled by the first several hundred names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of the university. He also thinks Obama is a very good writer. And that’s it, the whole positive case for voting Obama in 2008!

The rest is simply strange. Buckley reiterates his own position as a small government conservative with libertarian leanings. He would just as soon leave abortion and gay marriage to laissez faire, so Obama is attractive to him on that front. I suppose he didn’t consider the left’s (and Obama is a doctrinaire leftist) approval of taxpayer funded abortions. Neither does Buckley, despite his pedigree, seem to think at all about whether there are basic questions of right and wrong in the abortion debate that may deserve some legal intervention. There are non-arbitrary reasons, of course, for forbidding stealing, murder, or running red lights. Might abortion be the same?

Buckley cites his friend P.J. O’Rourke for the proposition “that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.” The very notion that a fellow quoting such a bracing coda could even consider voting for Obama, whose image decorates the t-shirts of college radicals in the same way Che Guevera’s does, is simply risible. Mr. Buckley, there is a reason Ralph Nader can’t get any attention this year. His natural constituents are all with Mr. Obama.

Having deluded himself that voting for Obama is somehow a vindication of his libertarian instincts, Buckley, like many Obama supporters, inflates the candidate with his own hopes. You see, because Obama is so wise, he will “surely understand that traditional left-wing politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.” At this point, one wonders whether the cynical, hard-bitten Chris Buckley has finally given in to the desire we all have to at some point DRINK THE KOOL-AID and join the fun. The idea that a man who came up the ranks of radical politics will somehow suddenly transform into Bill Clinton minus the libido is a fantasy. That candidate was Hillary, Chris. You should have endorsed her while you had the chance!

However, I think he has a major blind spot when it comes to politics. McLaren recently came out in support of Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency.

Now, before I go on, I understand how a man like McLaren could support Obama. You say, “Look, this man will begin programs for poor people. He will save the environment. He will bring healing to the racial divide in this country. Most of all, I like the way an Obama presidency feels.”

Aside from the last point, I will not even bother to rebut, though I could. I suspect the feeling about Obama may be the most important part. Many Christians have an averse reaction to conservative Christians in politics because they don’t like the tone. They don’t like the style, the apparent judgmentalness, the hardness of it. McLaren is one of those who has the averse reaction. Though I am far more conservative than McLaren, I’ve had the reaction myself in a room with certain types of people.

Unfortunately, McLaren is making a terrible mistake. If we agree that abortion is a terrible evil, which it is, then we must ask who is aiding that system of killing. The answer is simple. Obama aids it. He praises the funders and practitioners of it. He promises never to let it be limited or constrained. The one place where he is certain he favors free markets and laissez faire is with regard to abortion.

One could say it is but one of many issues, but so what if the issue is properly basic? Protecting unborn life is a yes or no answer pretty much like segregation is. Either you affirm humanity and its most basic rights or you do not. How would McLaren react to a candidate who supported everything he supported except that he proclaimed the question of segregation above his pay grade? Would he support that man or woman? I suspect not.

Brother McLaren, if you can’t go Republican for various reasons, your option would not be cooperation with a program of clear wrong. Your option would be to sit out until you can find a Democrat not actively at odds with one of the most basic tenets of the church (including the early church).

He thought her convention speech was substance-free and her debate performance was mediocre. I view things a bit differently. That convention speech was one of the finest political performances I’ve ever seen. The line about not seeking the good opinion of the media/political elite alone was worth the price of admission. And not just in entertainment value. That was substance. It was about embracing a different scale of values than those some think are so dominant as to brook no dissent.

But leave that aside. Sarah Palin has a political record. Let’s forget the ups and downs of her public speaking career and consider that. Are there conservatives who are going to argue her record is less than admirable? I don’t think it can be done. (No, this is not a challenge to see whether conservative contrarians can provide great e-alert material to the Obama camp.)

Palin is still imperfectly seasoned, but I think she’s going to be a transformative political figure in American politics. We’ll have to revisit that question in due time.

I appeal to the concept of edificiation. Do the words we write or say actually contribute anything to the election and to the civic discussion? Are they adequately considered after time to look at all the evidence? If I look at it in those terms, I have to side with the defenders.

The only possible way the critics could be in the right is if the writer really believes Palin is unfit to serve. I have a hard time believing that a bad interview demonstrates that. The situation is simple. A person with a career in state and local government, so greatly cherished by conservatives who love federalism, needs a little time to adjust to the national frame. I think it is really that easy. Patience is a virtue, friends.

I think the problem is endemic to the pundit class. We feel a need to produce a product, which is opinions, and so any thought that might have any possibility of generating a little action or emotion is vomited into the ether. When it comes to punditry, the idea of holding one’s tongue (or pen or keystroke) is counter to the entire business as it has evolved in the internet era. Words are free and readers are checking for updates constantly.