Welcome to today’s edition of Watercooler: Last Week, RedState.   This WC is all about Posts, Reader’s Diaries, and comments at RedState

Hot Topics Last Week:

Last week was a busy one for me and I have had little opportunity to catalog the posts of Last Week at RedState but one notable post was this one by Representative Mark Meadows who graced the RedState Front Page with a post: The Importance of Distinguishing Between Media Perception and Reality

Recurring Topics at RS:

This piece by Jay plays to the conservative movement’s equivalent of a Search for Bobby Fisher sort of angst: The Conservative Movement Needs a Real Leader: Ben Sasse Fits the Bill   For those of us that were around RedState during the primaries and elections last year, and way before that, the search for a leader of the conservative, pro-Constitution, movement is not, well, gentle on our minds but, an ever-present, angst that gnaws at our souls so we believe that somebody, anybody, needs to save us.

Laocoon and other have pointed out that leaders emerge during the right conditions that include fields of operations with enemies, enemies that provide those leaders with the boundaries and challenges required in to operate within a game.   Another way of putting the search for a savior is that we are trying to pick our champions but in focusing on those champions we are ignoring the totality of the game they’re immersed in and, consequently, we focus on the players of the game rather than the full game.

I suspect that this, almost, compulsive focus on the players and not the game with its rules, boundaries, and other players is one of the major contributing factors for the persistent condition where conservatives’ failures to dominate and win in the political arena morph into that angst.

Maybe you doubt about that but consider this, self-identified conservatives in this country are about equal in numbers with the number of self-identified liberals yet liberals continue to dominate the conversation, legislative policies, and our court system.  Liberals have inexorably captured one instrumentality of our civic life after another while conservatives pick one champion after another to send to DC and battle for the Presidency.  The two tactics executed over the last 100 years have resulted in a conservative movement that obsesses over finding a leader whilst the liberals focus on winning.

The milieu that our founding fathers were immersed in when they created this country was not consciously designed but, given the forces now arrayed against the effort to return this country to its Constitutional roots, today’s milieu will have to be.  At least, it must be intentionally shaped into the game conditions and rules that can simultaneously give us a return to the Constitution and to see a leader emerge from that milieu that can use the raw forces loosed upon this nation for the better.

Now, I don’t mean the use of armed insurrection because, to my very core I believe the Constitution provides for the execution of a insurrection based on the framework of our national governing structure and Constitution with no need for violence to achieve those goals.

Sorry, this didn’t start out as an editorial but it sort of turned into one!

RS Gatekeeper:

For those that haven’t noticed, the Posting Rules still aren’t working; I think the replacement page is interesting but not helpful.  For anyone that is interested in the posting rules, you can find them in the comments section here

This was being investigated, hopefully they’ll be restored soon.

Memorable RS One-Liners:

I don’t have any RedState one-liners but, I’m a life-long reader and one book that I encountered later in life helped me become a better reader, that book is Mortimer Adler’s How To Read A Book

One passage I found to be of particular interest is this one:

Whatever their causes, the effect of these errors on American education is only too obvious. They may account for the almost total neglect of intelligent reading throughout the school system. Much more time is spent in training students how to discover things for themselves than in training them how to learn from others.

…

Unless the art of reading is cultivated, as it is not in American education today, the use of books must steadily diminish. We may continue to gain some knowledge by speaking to nature, for it will always answer, but there is no point in our ancestors speaking to us unless we know how to listen.

RedState Tips:

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Drink up, that’s it for the Watercooler today. Remember, it’s an open thread all about RedState contributors from: the front page, Reader’s Diaries, or in the comments section.

Thanks for stopping by, hanging out, and drink up.