I am right-wing policy wonk, and pro-war at that, but what is going on transcends partisan politics.

I hear people call the comparisons to Camelot romanticized, but are they? Obama doesn't cheat on his wife with movie stars, nor did he come from any familial wealth, especially that gained by (the equivalent of) drug dealing. It would seem an improvement over JFK, or more appropriately, a real human being that can match up to the image of the martyr JFK became.

The main reason I am voting Obama: maybe, if he is elected, people could go back to talking to each other about things that matter; and it might even be socially acceptable for people to change their mind upon reflection.

Regarding the Kennedy comparison... ohhh snap! Conservatives for Obama has to be one of the strangest political phenomenon ever. I dislike Senator Barack "Kill 'em twice" Obama for a pretty obvious reason: he's more pro-abortion than Planned Parenthood. Regardless of whatever other virtues he may possess, I cannot vote for him. I could not and would not vote for a candidate who was pro-abortion even if I agreed with him on everything else. If that makes me a "single issue" voter, then so be it. Catholic social doctrine is the first filter through which I screen candidates for office. Some issues are weightier than others - good lay Catholics can disagree on things like socialized medicine or even capital punishment. There can be no compromise with abortion since it is an intrinsically evil act. Likewise with torture. Even if Mitt "Mitt" Romney were trustworthy, I can't vote for him after that "double Guantanamo" line.

But I understand that not all political conservatives are Catholic. I understand that for many abortion is either a non-issue or, God forgive them, something the government ought not to interfere with at all. That's why "conservatives for Obama" is so weird. He's actually to the left of Hillary. I read his second book, The Audacity of Hope. On every issue that matters he's a conventional liberal. I hate to say it but if he were a white guy named Barry, no one would consider him presidential material, at least not this soon.

That line about "socially acceptable to change their mind" got to me. I don't have a problem at all with someone who honestly changes their mind. I've changed my mind about many things over the past few years. Try reading some of my earliest entries; I sound like a totally different person. There are some people whom I dearly wish would change their minds. Obstinacy in the face of unpleasant facts or irrefutable arguments is no virtue. It can get people killed when it manifests in our leaders. The problem comes when people change their minds simply because their position is unpopular, or worse, to curry favor. That's the vibe I've always gotten from Mitt Romney. What makes that trait doubly irritating is how Romney portrays himself as "More conservative than thou" and questions his opponents' conservative credentials on issues where he only very recently came to religion himself.

So, Florida today. All the polls say it's a statistical tie between McCain and Romney. My perfect record for picking first place winners will surely be broken today. I say Romney by a very narrow margin, say two to three points. McCain second, Giuliani third, followed by Giuliani's dropping out shortly thereafter. I can see Huckabee and Rudy hanging in there through Super Tuesday, but now it seems to be a two man race between McCain and Romney. Joy.

Tags: politics

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I refute it THUS!	11:23 am

I finished From Dawn to Decadence the other day. The author, Jacques Barzun, celebrated his one hundredth birthday last year. In the interview he said that Western civilization has been going downhill since at least 1914. It's hard to disagree with him, particularly after reading his magnum opus. The last two hundred pages are the most vivid in my memory. It is difficult to overemphasize how... crazy, for lack of a better term, the world became during and after World War I. That title is something of a misnomer since there were world wars in the eighteenth century. WWI was not only a world-wide conflict but it was also another "people's war" the likes of which had not been seen since the Thirty Years War.

It's difficult to grasp the enormity of war. We read popular histories and think, "Oh wow, over 450,000 Americans died in WWII." How many of them were budding young writers, poets, artists, musicians, architects, or scientists? Barzun eschews the standard political-military-centric nature of other popular histories. The subtitle says the book is a survey of Western culture. Among many things it provides a short history of the detective story, Surrealist literature (which Barzun defends), Bauhaus architecture, Renaissance art, Humanist satires, Enlightenment plays, etc. Barzun believes the twenty years from 1885 to 1905 - which he calls the nineties - and the Cubist decade from 1905 to 1914 saw promising developments in all the fields of human endeavor, all cut short by WWI. The war derailed some of these budding young schools of thought, or diverted them into strange cul de sacs from which some have yet to emerge.

Ours is an Absurdist culture. What capital "A" absurd means is working at cross purposes. We spend billions on public education and push our children to EXCELLENCE because America has to be THE BEST at everything, yet we pounce on any individual display of superiority as elitism. We deplore violence and sexual promiscuity in young people, yet the violence and pornography in movies, the internet, books, television, and music cannot be suppressed in the interest of "free speech." Speech, in the United States anyway, has come to include actions. Burning the flag is a statement of opinion. This legalistic understanding of speech would seem to authorize assassination.

Barzun is generally conservative, but I think everyone could learn a lot from this. At 800 pages it's no light reading. You can read it profitably from start to finish like I did, or you can open up to any page and learn something new and interesting.

Tags: books, culture

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Let them eat cake	11:50 am

From last night's SOTU address:

[B]uilding a prosperous future for our citizens also depends on confronting enemies abroad and advancing liberty in troubled regions of the world.

Our foreign policy is based on a clear premise: We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace.

[snip]

The advance of liberty is opposed by terrorists and extremists -- evil men who despise freedom, despise America and aim to subject millions to their violent rule. ...Yet, in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on. In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny.

And that is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to the people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories.

And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom.
Let us show them that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time.

Talleyrand said of the Bourbons that they had "forgotten nothing and learned nothing." President Bush has not only learned nothing, he has remembered nothing. Freedom means salvation and Bush is going to stick to that line forever, regardless of what actual experience shows. Did advancing liberty among the Palestinians bring greater freedom and security to the world when they overwhelmingly voted for Hamas? Are the Russian people all terrorists and extremists because they support the authoritarian Vladimir Putin? Do the Venezuelan people hate freedom because they freely elected Hugo Chavez? Or is it possible that not everyone on earth yearns for the American model of society, of government, and of economics?

Freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom alone does not mean people will always choose the right thing. To assume that "spreading freedom" is always a good thing is nothing but blinkered ideology. Without a firm moral underpinning - Catholic social doctrine to name just one example - freedom only means the people are free to forge their own chains. History proves that they always do. The United States is a free country, but we aren't nearly as free as we used to be. Don't try to pin the blame on politicians alone. They are partly to blame, but who keeps electing them? Who keeps rewarding them? God save us from this kind of secular messianism.

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other." - John Adams