RattlerGator Blog

The “Prospects Abroad” Challenge for Traditional Conservatives In the Era of Islamofascism

In a lecture during the summer of 1990, famed conservative Russell Kirk gave an address titled, “Prospects for Conservatives, Part I: Prospects Abroad.” In it he detailed, in part, a cautionary warning to fellow conservatives of great interest and applicability to the political discussions of today. He said:

Forty years ago, Whittaker Chambers gloomily believed that in choosing the American cause of order, justice, and freedom, he was joining the losing side. It is said that Henry Kissinger, at the height of his influence in Washington, privately believed that his diplomatic endeavors were only postponing the eventual triumph of Communism and Soviet Union. How very different is our present prospect! (emphasis added) One thinks of Edmund Burke's rejection of historical determinism at the end of his days in his first Letter a Regicide Peace. Providence, or mere individual strong wills, or chance, Burke says, abruptly may alter the whole apparent direction of a nation. "I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes which necessarily affect the fortune of a State," as Burke puts it. It is possible, he mentions, that great and sudden changes in the affairs of nations may be the consequence of the "occasional interposition and the irresistible hand of the Great Disposer." One may speculate on whether during the past three years the Great Disposer's instrument may have been the Great Communicator, Mr. Reagan.

Score one for Burke and through the above paragraph, peer into the underlying angst seemingly on display everywhere among traditional conservatives. Further, while examining that unease, ask yourself this: how very different is our present prospect?

Re-examined in the light of today, that one line speaks volumes and has so far proven to be indigestible for acolytes of Ronald Reagan. Mind you, I’m not speaking here of mere fans of Ronald Reagan or others (such as myself) with a relatively new appreciation for his efforts as President of the United States. I’m talking about people who appear (appear) to not yet have come to terms with the fact of Ronald Reagan cutting and running from Lebanon after the United States Marines failed to protect their perimeter and were murdered by terrorists. There can be no doubt Reagan and many of his advisors thought of folks such as Russell Kirk when making that fatal mistake.

I’ve listened closely since 9-11 to the internal and external political debates in our political parties. It was that close attention that allowed me to resolutely tell the Democratic Party to get the hell out of my face. I agree with the analysis that President Jimmy Carter, whom I previously loved, failed to meet the foreign policy challenge presented during his term in office. Clearly, a line was crossed when Iranian radicals took over the American embassy and were never made to pay, and pay severely, for that act.

But a much, much bigger line was crossed in Lebanon . . . when our Marines were murdered. And Jimmy Carter wasn’t president then, the great communicator was. George Will and Peggy Noonan, among others, have a big issue staring them in the face and it may be a defining and uncomfortable one that essentially asks: does your present political reality constitute a September 10 world or a September 12 world?

In other words, do you really think Ronald Reagan, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the obvious machinations of Russia in the Middle East, would be backing away from meeting the challenge head-on? In the region? With boots on the ground?

I'll have more of my thoughts in the days to come about the Russians not "losing" the Cold War but simply moving it to another battlefield. An Islamofascist one.

The Original Carolina?

How about a topic of no consequence?

Recently, while engaging in one of my favorite mindless activities (checking out Gator sports websites and those of other college teams) I apparently committed the cardinal sin of suggesting to North Carolina fans -- in response to a question on their board -- that the Carolina Gamecocks refer to themselves as "Carolina" because that state *is* the original Carolina. The provincial North Carolina folks, elitists that they are, presume to claim the name for themselves alone. That's a patently absurd attitude and my response on that board clearly indicated so.

Oh my goodness!

Apparently I hit a nerve. All of a sudden (admittedly after some snark from me, in response to some of theirs) I found myself presented with a please, pretty please form which had to be filled out before I would be allowed to further post on their august board. Thanks, but no thanks. But the episode did grab my interest and lead me to check on my supposition. I'm pleased to report that I am, as far as I'm concerned, correct.

South Carolina is, in fact, the original Carolina - as much as that might hurt the Old North State to hear. Take note, not that anyone else is going to give a damn, but take note anyway -- from the State Library of North Carolina:

Although the Albemarle Region was the first permanent settlement in the Carolina area, another region was developed around present-day Charleston, South Carolina. Because of the natural harbor and easier access to trade with the West Indies, more attention was given to developing the Charleston area than her northern counterparts. For a twenty-year period, 1692-1712, the colonies of North and South Carolina existed as one unit of government. Although North Carolina still had her own assembly and council, the governor of Carolina resided in Charleston and a deputy governor appointed for North Carolina.

Did you catch that? They don't tell you this but the South Carolina "Albermarle" was the first permanent settlement in Carolina, while the North Carolina "Albermarle" was essentially a trailer park outpost. Many in North Carolina hope you don't comprehend this but . . . the only recognized, and seated, government of "Carolina" in its first days was located in Charleston, as was the Governor. "North" Carolina had a deputy governor. Thereafter, North Carolina and South Carolina were created even though they were still considered one entity. But now, they both had their own Governors.

Until some historian moseys along to correct me, that clearly says first off there was Carolina . . . and then there was North Carolina. Further, South Carolina was the first "Carolina" to enter the union (May 23, 1788, the 8th state) -- North Carolina was the 12th state to enter the union.

And, of course, "Tar Heel" has no application back to the original colonization of Carolina -- however,the name "Gamecock" is tied directly back to the Duke of Albermarle.

Finally, how about a picture to really annoy the fans of the North Carolina Tar Heels:

Take that, Tar Heels! Hell yeah!

Petulant and Childish

Hugh Hewitt has a great post up that really hits home with me. He links to Charles Glenn's Restitution blog, specifically a post on American Inconstancy. Here is what Glenn wrote in his post:

I heard an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday with GEN John Abizaid, and he made a remark which I took to be an indirect rebuke of everything written recently with the pens of men like George Will and William F. Buckley: he said he noticed during his trips to the United States from his base in Qatar that the country didn't seem to be very cognizant that there was a war going on. There was no broad kind of awareness of the war that he could easily pick up from random television viewing or newspaper-browsing.

I'm sad to say that I agree with him. It is something that has bothered me for quite some time. However, I am not content with the pat response to this phenomenon found on so many radio talk shows or conservative opinion pieces: namely that this is the result of the Bush administration not making the case to the public. Sorry, but I'm not buying that. That smacks, to me, of an all-too typical American cop-out, and one that conservatives in particular should be wary of: after all, we are the ones who continually remind other Americans that we should behave as grown-ups and that being an American is "advanced citizenship." To turn and claim that it is up to our president to hold our hands and remind us daily of how dire the consequences of losing this war really are, strikes me as petulant and childish. We are responsible for our destiny as a nation folks -- not George W. Bush, not Donald Rumsfeld, and not GEN John Abizaid. They work for us, not the other way round. Hearing Abizaid's remark made me feel genuinely ashamed to be a conservative.

An all-too typical American cop out -- exactly. Although it doesn't make me ashamed to be a conservative, it does make me think less of George Will, William F. Buckley and others like them. It's times like these when it is most important to *not* be petulant and childish and instead, that' seems to be precisely what we're getting from many old-line economic conservatives.

Impatience . . . oftentimes one of our great virtues as Americans in a slow-as-molasses world but definitely an achilles heel when it comes to staying the course and seeing a matter through. When I view Charles Glenn's bio page, naturally I'm quite pleased to read this:

Victor Davis Hanson, in a column he wrote a couple of years ago, compared the modern Europeans to Hobbits living in a make believe Shire, while the U.S. kept the forces of Mordor at bay (along with a few European Frodos and Bilbos). I thought the comparison was brilliant, and remains true today. However, I'm beginning to think he ought to have added Americans to the mix. Perhaps we're the Brandybucks living across the river ... but we're still in the Shire. It's our military, not our nation at large, who keep the forces of Mordor at bay. I think maybe it's time I leave the Shire.

Now, I'm still speaking metaphorically, of course. I'm 36, I've got a child with special needs, and I've already served nine years in the U.S. Navy ... so perhaps I could better serve the cause with my keyboard than with my boots.

So in that spirit, welcome to my blog and thanks for visiting. I will be posting as often as possible on as many different topics as I can, but my primary purpose will be to join the growing ranks of bloggers who are changing the way we as a society communicate and interract, and I'm doing so in the name of winning the War on Terror.

The war will be my primary focus, but as a moderate Republican, I will touch on other issues as well. I will do my best to inspire you to think, and occasionally to act. I have the honor to be working with our nations' finest men and women -- members of the United States Army -- and I will share what I can about how they inspire me, in turn.

My kind of man.

Growing the Economy and Taking It for Granted

I saw a very interesting post the other day from WILLisms contrasting American spending on entitlement programs versus American spending on the Department of Defense. Two graphs were used to drive home the point and I'm going to post them both for the same reason. Check this out:

Although the U.S. spends far more-- and more per capita-- than ever before, on the military, the trajectories of entitlement and defense spending are diverging as a percentage of GDP:

The next graph is equally compelling:

[M]ilitary spending is as high as it has ever been. But the American economy is also as high as it has ever been. As a percentage of the American economy, military spending today is not particularly outrageous:

This puts an interesting light on the continued Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party obsession with a so-called "peace dividend" and a drawdown in Defense spending as well as actual troops prior to 9-11. Now, the obsession has transferred to private contractors and big corporations.

Anything, it seems, but a focus on the ballooning entitlements and proper respect for a growing economy that has made so much possible. Some of these folks truly talk as if the benefits of America's entitlement programs grow on trees and need only be harvested -- like apples. That attitude is surely a primary reason for the continuing success of groups such as the Club for Growth.

Exhibit "A" for Why There Is No College Football Playoff

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you . . . Maurice Clarett:

The Maurice Clarett saga just got a little weirder.

Clarett was bankrolled by an alleged member of an Israeli crime organization after leaving Ohio State, ESPN reported. His attorney reportedly told ESPN on Thursday that Clarett, who was arrested by police last week when he refused to pull over after a traffic violation, may have been in possession of firearms to protect himself from mob activity.

Nick Mango, Clarett's attorney, told ESPN that his client has received several death threats during the past year, but what worried him most was a postcard sent from Los Angeles last week had him wondering about Clarett's ties to an alleged mob enforcer.

An Israeli mobster? Are you kidding me!?!

No one wants to really talk about it but this is the primary reason there is no college football playoff. March Madness is big, and all of the administrators are worried about shaving points and protecting everybody from bookies, etc., but a college football playoff would absolutely dwarf March Madness were it ever to occur. Since the whole NCAA "farm system" thing is out of whack, and college players aren't officially paid, college football is a ticking time bomb.

I'll have more on the whole NCAA farm system thing in a post sometime in the near future.

Educating the National Review Crowd

I was completely unimpressed with the recent National Review Symposium on the Middle East -- defeatist and living in the past. So, as much as Rich Lowry can bug the hell out of me at times, he is to be credited with at least publicizing this e-mail that he recently received which, it appears to me, takes serious issue with the conclusions of most participants:

Gentlemen:

Some thoughts on your recent exchange:

I continue to read from conservative bloggers that the alternative to a ceasefire arrangement  (leaving aside how it was reached) was/is the "dismantlement"(JPod) or "destruction" (JGoldberg) or "eradication" (MRubin) of hizbullah. So tell me:  Why, exactly, does anyone actually believe this was a possible goal, or remains so? And if it is, why don’t we use our much more powerful army in Iraq to just "destroy" that insurgency in the same way?

Even before this conflict, Hizbullah had overwhelming support among the population in which it resides, the Shia of southern Lebanon. Any Israeli occupation of the hundreds of Shia villages in the south would, therefore, inevitably be met by hizbullah fighters melting into the population, and forming a well-armed and locally-backed insurgency. It seems to me that such an insurgency can be defeated only by winning over that populace - which would never happen - or by methods of such brutality that they could never be employed, and might well backfire if they were. Am I missing something? Is there some secret strategy you have that I am unaware of?

Israel itself tried all of this before. In 1982, it sought in just the way you propose to resolve its problems in Lebanon by force. Its initial success proved extraordinary pyrrhic.  It wound up retreating from much of the country under duress in 1985, and by then the Shia population that had welcomed it intially had given its support to a far more formidable foe than Israel had previously faced….

In the same way as the Israeli left and its supporters have never really come to terms with the failure of Oslo, the right in Israel and those who hold similar views have never really come to terms with the fiasco that resulted from 1982. They simply propose it all over again, without apparent recognition of its disastrous prior outcome. Why do you think this time it would be different?

It seems to me that the great lesson of the last couple of decades in Israel - and of the American experience in Iraq for that matter - is the need to end thinking magically about security challenges. Neither the military nor diplomacy are capable of "ending" conflicts or "destroying" adversaries, except in very rare circumstances. (Even after its great defeat in 1967, Egypt was able to inflict hundreds of casualties on Israel in the war of attrition that soon followed.) Problems are almost always solved incrementally.

Exactly.

My take is that the Bush Administration fully understands this and has, in fact, been operating on this precise thought since 9-11 snapped many of us out of our slumber. Never mind official pronouncements, some intended only for posturing and positioning. George Bush has a detailed gameplan that he is operating from, come hell or high water. There are certain ways in which the United Nations might be useful, others where they will be adversarial, others where we will simply have to say to hell with all of them.

Prediction: Florida Gators to Win the SEC, Play in the National Championship Game

Yes, it is August and yes, I have come down with a bad case of Gator Football Fever. It happens every year, and I couldn't be happier that it does. Had we left Ron Zook alone (and not chased him to Illinois), we would have won the SEC last year. But we had to break in a brand new offense and Urban Meyer didn't quite get the correct mix to suit the talent we had at Florida. By the end of the year, however, we pretty much had things down. A 34-7 blowout of Florida State, plus a bowl game that saw us up 31-7 against a good Iowa team before we let up, still winning 31-24.

The team this year will have much more talented upperclassmen leadership to go along with two straight top-flight recruiting classes full of talent. We will have a monster on both sides of the ball -- but will have to be fortunate for our offensive line to excel, which is a desperate need. If they do, and I am (naturally) predicting they will -- we will go undefeated in the SEC, win the SEC Championship game, and play for the national title. The team is that good. Here are my SEC predictions for conference games only, with team losses in parens:

East

Florida 8-0

UGA 6-2 (USC, UF)

South Carolina 5-3 (AU, UArk, UF)

Tennessee 4-4 (UF, UGA, USC, LSU)

Vandy 1-7 (Bama, UArk, UM, UGA, USC, UF, UT)

Kentucky 1-7 (UM, UF, USC, LSU, UGA, UT, VU)

West

Auburn 6-2 (UF, LSU)

LSU 6-2 (AU, UF)

Alabama 4-4 (UF, UT, LSU, AU)

Arkansas 4-4 (AU, LSU, MSU, Bama)

Ole Miss 3-5 (UGA, Bama, UArk, AU, LSU)

MSU 2-6 (USC, AU, LSU, UGA, Bama, Ole Miss)

Auburn (10-2) and Florida (12-0) rematch in the Championship game, Florida wins again. Florida plays for the national title.

Yep, this is exactly the way it's going to go down.

Iranians Denied a United Nations Victory

In the larger scheme of things, all that really needs to be known about the ceasefire in the Israel - Hezbollah conflict is this: the Iranians have been denied a United Nations victory and are still on course to receive some painful medicine in the very near future. Dafydd ab Hugh has a great post up on the ceasefire, walking through many of the domestic particulars in Israel (one "weakness" of democracy is the primary relevance of this component). Here's a flavor from his post:

The Knesset has 120 seats; so the ruling coalition (Kadima and Labor) holds only 40% of the seats. It's a mess right now... but it's an elected mess. If you recall, Olmert had to scramble to find the 61 seats necessary even to form a government in the first place. (What Israel really needs is a new election.)

Why does this matter? Because neither the government nor the people of Israel were prepared for an actual shooting war with Hezbollah (which fact must have entered into Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's calculations) [RattlerGator: come on man, Nasrallah? Iran, Iran, Iran -- if this is not viewed COMPLETELY through the lens of Iran there can be no clarity]. When it was thrust upon them, they dithered and balked: at the moment, the Israeli people have the government they deserve; but the IDF deserves much better leadership than it has.

In particular, the Israeli people are still allergic to occupation, with all the brutality that necessarily entails in the post-1979 world. They are more afraid of the 18-year Lebanese occupation than they are of Hezbollah. Whether or not continued Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon would be the best solution, it's a solution that is unavailable to the government, given the current position of the civitas. It's as tantalizingly close but forever out of reach as would be an attack on Syria.

So it's a UN occupation or nothing.

True, for the most part. But this isn't about an Israeli inability to politically resolve to do what must be done. This is about skillful Iranian provocations strategically aimed at weak points in a whole host of democratic governments -- including Israel and America -- and the most important weakpoint, counterintuitively, is the media. Here was my response:

Good post.

I think the initial attack on Fallujah was a well-planned trap that the Bush Administration wisely declined to gift-wrap to the opposition. Your points are good but far more important was the Jihadi requirement to flood al-Jazeera and the world media with images of civilian deaths. Think about it. And after flooding these images, then would come the massive "resistance" -- it's a very simple soap opera script with a ready-made audience ravenously waiting to eat and revel on the glory of the story.

Likewise, this conflict has been a well-planned trap. All those still bitching about a blitzkrieg by the IDF which was politically not allowed to happen are COMPLETELY underestimating the enemy. Which the enemy was counting on. Your points about the Israeli electorate is more on-point for me when discussing what appears to me the almost juvenile need to believe in the mythology of the IDF.

Those days are gone, and the sooner the Israeli population comes to terms with that fact the better. That "blitzkrieg" IDF has been neutralized and is likely never to return. Great superiority, however, is still there.

Condoleezza Rice has worked her behind off trying to manage the slow but steady steps forward in this region. That so many in the center and on the right can't see this is extremely disappointing. Ultimately, thank God that neither the Israelis or the Bush Admin played into the hands of the enemy and gift-wrapped a United Nations victory for the Iranians when a much-needed spanking is about to be a fait accompli.

Incredibly, many on the leftwing in the community of democracies are doing the dirty work for the Iranians and doing it very well. The fact the John Bolton has massaged the U.N. forward is a huge victory for America. The fact that Condoleezza Rice, a Russian expert, has expertly worked the Arabs so that their typical U.N. script in any Israeli conflict with her neighbors has not been played out in ordinary fashion is a huge victory for America. The patience of George W. Bush is also a huge victory for America.

The Iranians are taking a beating. And they know it.

Faith, and the Lack Thereof

In so many ways, these are trying times in international affairs, and human nature has resulted in this response from far too many Americans:

Panic, panic, panic.

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Moan, moan, moan.

Lament, lament, lament.

What is it about the “peanut gallery” that makes people act so? If interested in what has me so agitated, read this post at the website of my blog god Wretchard the Cat. The thread, which as of this writing is nearing 600 posts long, agitated me – vexed me, in fact. Particularly because many of the readers of that blog should have a better grip on reality than is evident more these days than has been evident since non-state terrorists were first engaged by the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9-11.

Panic, panic, panic.

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Moan, moan, moan.

Lament, lament, lament.

I was driven to respond, given that I’m a Bush Administration hack, into making something of a case for patience and understanding – faith, in other words. Here was my contribution:

Impatience.

Our true achilles heel.

Other than the nattering nabobs of negativity. Look, if Bill Clinton were President, Albright at State, and some like-minded Democrat at the U.N., then I might be worried.

But with Bush at the helm, Dr. Rice at State, and Bolton at the U.N. -- damn, some of y'all are relentlessly negative. I understand some of the disappointment from the Israelis -- they are invested in the myth of the IDF. But does anyone remember the stupidity of a certain set of USMC types bitching from the safety of their California base about U.S. Army ineptitude in Iraq, after the initial war phase was completed but early on in our ongoing "winning the peace" phase -- anybody remember that? The USMC's vaunted "velvet glove" stupidity?

Which was completely oblivious of the Fedayeen and still stuck thinking about the damn Vietnamese? Well, that's what the hell some of y'all want with the Hez in Lebanon. Some of y'all want the IDF to be stupid and walk right into the Hezbollah's military and propaganda preparations. You think the Hez (just like the Fedayeen) haven't studied the strengths of the IDF -- and prepared for them? These Iranians are not buck-tooth idiots, man! But y'all bitch and moan on here like wenches on the rag.

There's an obvious disinformation campaign going on, obvious probing going on, obvious attempts to make the other side show their hand. Patience is on our side, and impatience works to the benefit of the Islamists. Which is why we're so lucky to have Bush at the helm. The Democrats would have been spooked stupid by 9-11 and all of y'all know it.

Though people still haven't figured it out, the Bush Administration forcing a pullback from the first Fallujah assault in Iraq was a brilliant move -- otherwise, the propaganda gift to the Islamists would have been Qana times ten. They were all set and ready for their own version of Hezbollywood. For any serious-minded person, the Islamist playbook is being made very, very plain. And limited.

Patience, patience, patience. We have no choice but to play chess. Let the professionals do their damn job. Iran has already screwed up, so has Syria; both are already boxed in but there are certain required steps that must be followed. Just let the denouement of this kabuki (who was that -- Catherine?) play itself out.

But, of course, the kid was ignored. And on went the thread:

Panic, panic, panic.

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Moan, moan, moan.

Lament, lament, lament.

But then, from out of the blue, came a redeemer self-identified as The Mad Fiddler:

To Wretchard and all the folks who find sanctuary in the company of the Belmont Club,

This morning I walked around my neighborhood a little after dawn, savoring air that was cool and fragrant with honeysuckle, mimosa, pine, and gardenia. Each home seemed to offer a different perfume of the owner’s favorite plants, some whispering more to the eye with extravagant rouges and blues and zanthic yellows. Mourning doves called, to each other, I know. But they seemed softly to reproach me for letting myself be so preoccupied lately with darkness and trouble.

Crossing a creekbridge shaded by towering loblolly pines and pin oaks, I caught a whiff of mud flats and boggie critters, and was suddenly transported back to childhood days spent in intent study of the society of fiddler crabs on the banks of a nearby marsh. The placid surface of the tidewater creek reflected a sky pure and unblemished by any sound but morning birdcalls; by any movement but breeze-borne spider silk.

It was a kind of intoxication, or bewitchment, that I’ve been denying myself too long.

For a spell I aim to spend a lot more time savoring my little patch, and thinking about how much beauty there is, not just in nature, but in the people who tend their gardens, and clean up their public ways when they’re done with their own yards, and still have time and energy to volunteer for the rescue squad, or shelve books at the library, or serve church dinners. Playing my fiddle for folks in hospital, sometimes for people living out their final days or hours, has been challenging, but gives me some sense that I can ease other folks’ burdens with something that might otherwise be shabby self-indulgence.

I wish I had Mr. Kielland’s expansive confidence that the worst is past. But what struck finally me this morning is that whatever happens in the short term, I do share his sense that things will work out. I love that phrase: “In the fullness of time...” It conveys to me a reminder that a jaundiced view puckers our squinty eyes like blinders, making us numb to the wide world and the titanic stretch of time behind and before. Once in a while, a little injection of cosmic perspective helps to settle the mind at how small the ripples in the stream really are.

My brother planted several pine seedlings in our backyard the year my folks moved into this house, now forty-one years ago. Those have matured to rival even the most ancient of the trees, and shelter trailing vines that house birds, snakes, squirrels, frogs, cicadas, bees, ladybugs and mantids. Just a few decades, and the scars of fire and ruin can be healed by lush growth and steady human labor. Nagasaki and Hiroshima have been rebuilt, along with Dresden and Hamburg and Coventry and a thousand other cities and towns once shattered by man and nature, and their inhabitants rush about their business and have to be reminded to take an occasional day to remember...

I want to thank all of you for the time and efforts and research you’ve done and shared; for the late nights and gritty eyes and sore wrists from typing and scrolling, keeping the conversations going. It has helped me sort things out. I hope the exchange has reached a few others. Seems like the last couple of weeks we’ve seen a passle of folks join in that had been silent, but taking notes all the while. The thoughts, challenges, responses, but most importantly, the fundamental decency and civility of this forum set a very high standard for constructive debate. I pray that somewhere in some quiet alcove in Teheran, or Beijing, or in a study carel in a Pakistani madrassah, maybe someone has surreptitiously been following the conversations here or some of the other blogs, and come away with a quickening hunger to join in.

Mad Fiddler, thank you. Your post is one of the examples demonstrating why the blogosphere is a beautiful thing. Concerning that last sentence, there can be no doubt that most of humanity wishes the same.

I’ve begun reading a book that will likely take two years to finish (because of my own peculiar reading habits) but I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve read so far. In Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1967 book, “Introduction to Christianity,” he early on in the writing made these basic points (the numbering is not associated with the book but with this post alone):

1. On top of the gulf between the visible and invisible, there comes (just to make things even harder for humanity) the gulf between the “then” and the “now,” rendering belief as old fashioned and trapping the unsuspecting into an outlook that makes belief appear to be a demand to bind oneself to yesterday – a tough sell in an age where the idea of “tradition” has been replaced by the idea of “progress,” however defined

2. In an earlier time, tradition was a rock – a firm program offering something protective upon which man could rely; thus, the primary stumbling block to belief (the distance between the visible and the invisible – i.e., between God and Not-God) is impeded by the secondary stumbling block of Then and Now – rendering it the antithesis between tradition and progress

3. Christian belief is not merely concerned with belief or faith but is much more concerned with God in history, with God as man

4. By making us meet God as a man, the eternal as the temporal, as one of us, it understands itself as revelation

5. Does life involve only the ascertained and ascertainable, or is ascertaining perhaps only one particular method of making contact with reality, one that can by no means comprehend the whole of reality and that even leads to falsification of the truth and of human existence – if we assume that it is the only definitive method?

And further into the book, Ratzinger notes:

6. Many, many, many will strive to deny it but there is a realm that allows no other response but that of entertaining a belief, and no man can completely avoid this realm – every man is bound to have some kind of “belief”

Yeah. That’s right. So I will close with the 23^rd Psalm. It seems appropriate to me.

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;

Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

 

Keep the faith, ladies and gentlemen, keep the faith.

Let the Democratic Party Contraction Begin in Earnest

Two nuggets from the Nutmeg State, delivered by Michael Barone, frame the picture:

• [1] There was no exit poll, but apparently Lieberman carried black voters, despite Jesse Jackson's and Al Sharpton's vocal support of Lamont. That may have been counterbalanced by Bill Clinton's appearance for Lieberman. And it may also owe something to this contrast: Lieberman volunteered to work in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the summer of 1964-an act that required genuine courage-while Lamont this year resigned from the exclusive Round Hill Club in Greenwich of which he was a member, presumably quite contentedly, for many years.

That is incredibly bad news for Democrats. Without a monolithic lock on the votes of African Americans, most Democrats have no real ability to win statewide elections in most states. I'm often amazed how many black Democrats will kick folks to the curb who have worked with (and for) the black community for years -- all because their masters in the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party say so.

They didn't do that in Connecticut. Uh, oh. That liberal, blue state already has more registered Independents than Republicans or Democrats and said Independents could not vote in the Democratic primary. Uh, oh.

• [2] Blogger Brendan Loy, who did such a splendid job of covering Hurricane Katrina, has announced that he has quit the Democratic Party out of disgust with Lieberman's defeat. Excerpt: "News flash, people: The Democratic Party is the 'small tent' party of the 21st century. That's been getting clearer for a while, and today it became official. You dissent from the party line, you're hung out to dry. That's the lesson of today's vote, and it's a disturbing one to anyone who cares about the future of the Democratic Party." Is Loy, who is in his 20s, a harbinger of other young voters, who were attracted to the Democratic Party by Bill Clinton's tolerant image and turned off by George W. Bush's preachiness and cultural conservatism? Just asking. A Republican Party whose leading 2008 candidates are Rudy Giuliani and John McCain may look more tolerant and welcoming than a Democratic Party whose leading 2008 candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is increasingly being batted around by the hard left.

I've had to suffer rants from a number of Democratic acquaintances over the last couple of years. They are simply filled with either too much hate or superiority to think straight these days and they are well on the way to royally screwing themselves.

I've said it before -- there's one dynamic political party in American politics right now engaging in a back and forth among themselves about various policy issues and that's the Republican Party. The Democrats are simply craven for political power, period, and that simply isn't going to be sufficient.

Let the contraction begin in earnest and may it be led by the flight of a certain percentage of African Americans who haven't believed what these folks have been selling for years now. May it also include a healthy number of Jewish voters who would be crazy as hell if they didn't do a serious reassessment of their traditional political patterns. The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party is completely out of control -- witness the recent Cynthia McKinney fiasco in Atlanta.

Whatever the case, let the contraction begin.