I leave it to the judgment of moderators whether this post is worthy of appearing anywhere on RedState, but it is a sincere bleg.

After the shootings in Tucson, it occurred to me that some people may try to make a political issue out of this. On reflection, I came to the conclusion that anyone who is such an abjectly stupid, morally depraved sack of dung that he would do that is probably so marginalized, posting to the ether on his own insipid blog, that I would never encounter such a thing. Then Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and others just seemed to come out of the woodwork to prove that I was wrong.

Now, I never like it when someone proves conclusively that I’m wrong, but I really had some core beliefs about the decency of people shattered here. Frankly, the past few days leave me feeling like I need to bathe in disinfectant and scrape down with a wire brush just to get the filth spewed by these people off of me.

So, my question: how do you cope? Surely at least some other people are as genuinely shaken as I am. What do you do? Turn down the lights, make a martini and listen to Mozart to remind yourself that humans are capable of genuine genius? Do you get in a whirlpool bath with a glass of wine? Pray A LOT? What?

I don’t mean to turn RedState into a psychologist’s couch, but I think this is a genuinely pertinent question.

Thanks for your input.

To paraphrase Chesterton, the problem with atheists is not that they believe nothing, it’s that they’ll believe anything. I couldn’t resist the wonderful example of this in the following two Corner posts from the always unintentionally hilarious John Derbyshire.

Godless Bloggers [John Derbyshire]

I have got together with a handful of other conservative unbelievers and we have started a blog, Secular Right. We’d welcome thoughtful, un-cranky comments (the other kind will be filtered out). Indeed, if you have some experience of writing and/or blogging, and are of the secular-right confession, we’ll give you contributor status, conditional on a vote among existing contributors.

I’m blogging on the site as “Bradlaugh,” in honor of my home town.

11/25 10:13 AM

Keeee-aaaiiiiii! [John Derbyshire]

For anyone who doubts, or does not know, that the late Bruce Lee was a very extraordinary person indeed, here is a brief video clip of him playing ping-pong with nunchucks.. Children, please do not try this at home.

My personal memoir of Lee is here.

11/25 10:08 AM

Here’s Frum’s post in its entirety.

Palin Reviewed

She’s under-informed and over-confident.

But there was no “macaca” moment, so she survives.

Those who wish to believe in her will continue to believe in her.

As for the rest – well it’s a 6 in 7 chance that McCain makes it to the end of his first term. That’s pretty good!

Now I know that this is just a blog post, and actual intellectual work is usually anathema to bloggers; but Frum has, in the past, shown an ability to do better. What is it that makes him think Palin is underinformed or overconfident? More to the point, what is it about Palin that reduces one of the more thoughtful bloggers to a second-grade playground bully? Frum’s post is the internet equivalent of “Hey, Sarah Palin is a poo-poo-head. Pass it on.”

Amazingly enough, the following appears to be Mort Kondracke’s argument:

1. Sarah Palin advocates abstinence-only sex education programs.
2. Bristol Palin (Sarah’s daughter) had pre-marital sex and got pregnant.

3. If 1 and 2, then abstinence-only sex education programs are ineffective.

4. Therefore, abstinence-only sex education programs are ineffective.

QED Mort. An intellectual triumph!

I had almost written off Andy McCarthy during the Special Witch Hunt of Lewis Libby. Apparently out of loyalty to Fitzgerald, McCarthy refused to acknowledge what everyone else could see: that the man had disgraced himself as a prosecutor. Lately, however, McCarthy has been absolutely on fire with his posts on National Review’s “The Corner” regarding legal issues and security issues involving the GWOT. Today, however, he switched gears to political news, specifically the selection of Sarah Palin for the Veep slot.

Rick Brookhiser posted what could charitably be described as a spectacularly stupid and offensive series of remarks on the Palin pick, which I had some thoughts about responding to. But I can certainly do no better than to point you to McCarthy’s thoughtful and polite (one might say restrained, given the provocation) reply. It may get my vote for smackdown of the year, so I decided just to link it in lieu of producing what would by comparison be a lame and vitriolic response.