I am hardly the first to write about this subject, but I’ve had this subject rolling around in my head for a few weeks now…I want to talk with you (hopefully in the comments) about the collectivist philosophy of the Left.  Specifically, I want to talk to you about the difference in public treatment of collectivists who have moral failings (think Bill Clinton, for example; or possibly Eliot Spitzer for a more recent example), and the public treatment of conservatives who have moral failings (Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, John Ensign, etcetera).

It seems to me that the public, conservatives and others, all condemn the moral failings of conservatives.  This could possibly be seen as a hatred of hypocrisy; certainly it is difficult to defend the immoral actions of a man who has a long public record of advocating morality.  Can any of us really blame the non-conservative, then, for at least noting the failure of a conservative to live up to his own standard?

I mean that rhetorically of course; we all note that failure as a matter of course, and I don’t think we could legitimately deny non-conservatives that ability.  But is it a failure of the standard, or of the standard-bearer?  Does the failure of a conservative individual mean that conservatism itself has failed?  Does it mean that conservatism is a bogus standard?  Should we not have conservatism as a goal, even though it is difficult to reach?

I think of what Tom Landry used to say to the press: Winning isn’t everything.  It’s the only thing.

Perfection is a difficult standard indeed.  I’m a Christian, and I believe there has been exactly one man to ever live a wholly perfect life — and being found not worthy of death, was made a sacrifice for my imperfection.  I am not now, nor have I been for quite some time, morally perfect in my own right.  But does that mean I should not try?  Is perfection from this point forward too much to have as a goal?

Perfection, like conservatism, is a goal.  It is a goal set by each individual; and when that goal is met, there can be nothing morally wrong with it.

What of collectivism?

It seems to me that the public, with the exception of conservatives, seems unwilling to condemn the moral failings of collectivists — those who hold the pursuit of power of the collective over the individual as their goal — in almost every case.  Clinton, if you remember, was “impeached for sex.”  Actually, he wasn’t.  He was impeached, but not removed from office, for perjury — lying under the oath of truthfulness.  And today he is celebrated (by everyone except conservatives) as “the most talented politician of his generation.”

Think now of the command of Marcus Aurelius, “of every thing, ask ‘what is it?’”  What is collectivism?  I think it is too great a definition to give here, but a piece of it might be “an individual’s pursuit of power over the whole.”  In this case, what is moral?  Morality, it seems, is whatever consolidates the power of the collective (the governed) in the hands of the governor.  The virtues of a collectivist then, are whatever traits are necessary to facilitate that consolidation.  This is partially why a collectivist is never attacked for something we define as a moral shortcoming:  Morality for a collectivist has a different definition.

Sophistry, demagogury, pageantry; a knack for steering the whim of the masses.  These are virtues according to a collectivist philosophy.  This is why liberals are so angry when they lose; the only moral failing is to fail to win. It is a personal moral failing for a liberal politician to fail to impose his (or her) will on the constitutency.  And more than that; because liberalism itself must never be allowed to seem morally bankrupt; its politicians are never at fault for their moral failings.  Liberals construe themselves as victims of extenuating circumstances, never as servants of a bankrupt philosophy.

Think about that.  When a liberal fails to live up to the demands of their philosophy, it is your fault. If Barack Obama lost, they were setting the stage to paint America as a racist country.  When climate scientists are caught colluding with collectivists to control the energy consumption of individuals, it isn’t a moral failing of the scientists — or even a failure of the collectivists to be intellectually honest.  Instead, we are blamed. We are told that the scientists are being “Swift-Boated;” we are compared to the Italian Fascisti, compared to Holocaust-deniers, even to the Nazis themselves.  SENATOR Babs Boxer, instead of investigating Climategate, wants to investigate who released the emails (from a Russian FTP server, good luck with that, ma’am) — as if that were the greater crime!

We are blamed for the moral failings of liberals, as they define them.

What gall they have!

One of my favorite things to do in the blogosphere is fisking idiotic posts.  I’m bored, it’s snowing, I’ve actually played a full game of Monopoly with my little brother…he won, but we finished.  So I went looking for something fun to fisk on the DailyKos.

This is a bit old, but DUDE.  It’s past the make-me-angry stage, and well into the holy-crap-even-Olbermann-is-smarter range!  LET THE FISKOGRAPHY BEGIN!

While you were out in la-la land, Neo-Conservatives have stripped down, sold off and outsourced America. Our Debt came from the war in Iraq that came from the torture evidence we ripped out of the terrorists, and the economy collapsed because we de-regulated, privatized and outsourced everything. Every Conservative since Teddy Roosevelt has been a total crook, and [darn] near every Democrat is too. Our American political and economic systems are flat out broken, and now that that part is out of the way, we can move on to some basic problems in logic most media brainwashed Conservatives suffer from, so, here are some facts based on evidence for you to meet.

So I need that Ministry fellow to explain something: Wasn’t he just talking to conservatives as if we were the problem?  Now he’s hatin’ on neoconservatives, which are a somewhat different philosophical animal.  Our debt was partially driven by the war, but also partially driven by the eventual 3-trillion-dollar cost of Medicare Part D.  That, I will give you; we never should have done that.  Next, our economy collapsed because Congwessman Fwank (I’ve met him, spoken with him, and he’s an epic horse’s arse) and his Banking Committee cohorts wanted to “roll the dice” a bit longer on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; because the regulations we had on the economy were not enforced by Tim Geithner (hey, where have I heard that name before?), and because the market distortion caused by sub-prime mortgages given by the former in bundles of paper called “securities” to giant financial institutions under the nose of the latter, abruptly met its predictable end when the over-leveraging of capital became excruciatingly obvious to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.  If you’re wondering who warned people about the impending economic doom, they were people such as John McCain (whom no conservative likes, but we agree in this area at least), George W. Bush (turns out he actually earned his Harvard MBA), and a ton of conservatives who watched the market twist itself into an unsustainable mess.

That’s what happens when the forces of government try to bend the invisible hand of Adam Smith to their policy whims.  It bites back, so to speak.

ACORN is NOT a bigger problem than Blackwater, Haliburton, KBR, Goldman Sachs, The Bank of America, [sic] Citigroup, and the Loch Ness Monster combined. The Republican party lost in 2008 because the were corrupt, incompetent criminals. They lost, so deal with it.

No, of course not; human trafficking of underage females for the purpose of raping them to death for profit — and eventual electoral gains of the Democrat party — is a much smaller problem than Blackwater, whose operations apparently kept Afghanistan from going a-wire; much smaller than KBR and Haliburton rebuilding Iraq after we destroyed it; much smaller than Goldman Sachs being a driving force in revitalizing the American markets.

Yeah, ACORN is no problem at all.

Socialism is NOT the problem, not even on the radar. Socialism is what rich people scream if anything threatens their profit.

Socialism is the government mucking around with mass economic decision-making.  Socialism caused the economic collapse, as it always does and always has.  And I’m not rich, I just read a lot.

ALL of the Media is BULL[FEATHERS], but especially FOX and News Corporation. THINK about it, NEWS Corporation!

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!  Does it even occur to these people that the Marxists they support on Air America and MSNBC are owned by corporations?

More troops, No Plan = Military FAILURE.

More troops + wrong plan = Military FAILURE.  More troops + plan with too many public details = Military FAILURE.  No More Troops?

Military failure, guaranteed.  So how about you shaddup and let the military figure out what it needs, hmmkay?

Without New Ideas America CAN NOT Stay Great.

I agree.  So let’s throw out everything that Karl Marx wrote, and start from the beginning, shall we?

Fossil Fuels ARE THE PROBLEM. Anyone who denies climate change is denying the existance [sic] of pollution and it’s [sic] effects.

The planet, from around the seventies for about twenty years, warmed up.  The last 15 or so years?  We’ve been cooling down.  Google “climategate” for more information.

If you are not a woman, STFU about women’s rights.

If you are not a minority, STFU about that group of minorities.

If you are not LGBT, STFU about LGBT issues.

Oh yay, this is my favorite argument EVER!  If you are not a capitalist, don’t complain about the economy.  If you do not hold a full-time job, don’t complain about taxes.  If you have never been in the military, don’t complain about tactics, strategy, rules of engagement, gays in the military, and anything else to do with people who wear the uniform of the United States Military.  If you didn’t work your way through college, don’t complain about how it costs too much.  If you don’t speak Italian, don’t talk about the Amanda Knox case.  Matter of fact, if you’ve never killed someone or BEEN KILLED by someone else, don’t complain about how murder is such a problem.

If you don’t own a gun, don’t advocate gun control laws.  If you don’t pay a mortgage OR rent, don’t complain about how housing is too expensive for the poor to obtain.  If you don’t smoke, don’t complain about second-hand smoke.  If you’re not fat, don’t complain about how heart disease for one person drives up the overall health care costs of the entire nation.

Have I made my point yet?

Keep your religious views OUT of public office.

Yours is the religion of the state — everything in the state, nothing outside of it.  It is your god, your maker, your sustainer, and your animating force.  So if you’re gonna reduce the reach and power of my God, can I do the same to yours?

I thought not.

In fact, READ THE CONSTITUTION, over and over again until you can memorize it.

Memorization isn’t good enough.  Being able to merely recite the words of some grandiose work of literature does not do the work justice.  Instead, it takes wisdom, rightly dividing the word of truth, so to speak; wisdom to understand the Constitution, its meaning and intent.  That’s the difference between liberals and conservatives, or one of them: You know what it says.  We know what it means.

There really is so much more we can teach you, dear Conservatives, but only if you’ll open your minds.

We have already evaluated your philosophy, and found it morally and intellectually bankrupt.  We need not open our minds to worthless drivel such as that.

But we are sorry you don’t get it just yet.

Oh, but we do!

We are sorry that you believe every lie. We are sorry that you are misinformed. Every death panel is real, every terrorist strike is eminent [SSSIIIIIICCCC], every Conspiracy Theory might be plausible in your misinformed world, and it’s not your fault for believing the lies since they are repeated daily. You can’t help but believe in what you are told when it is reinforced over and over. You’ve been indoctrinated by it.

Indeed, we conservatives are sorry that you believe the lies you hear about us; that you think we all believe death panels are real, every terrorist strike is imminent (thanks to us, they’re not), that you believe every conspiracy theory might be plausible for such thoughtful people as us.  We generally don’t believe that 9/11 was an inside job, as you do; we generally disagree with the “birther” argument; we desperately want President Obama to be safe from the Ted Kaczynskis of the world — and not just because a President Biden would be horrific for the future of America.  And though it is your fault for believing such bollocks (individual choice, dontcha know), it is unsurprising to see that you do — since a very early age, the education system of America has geared you to love the liberal fascism in which you now believe.  You’ve been indoctrinated by it.

We are sorry that you don’t want your kids learning certain things. We are sorry that you are afraid and confused. We are sorry that you are angry and scared. We will try to make it better but it only works if you stop fighting us like it was good versus evil, because, dear Conservatives, liberals are on YOUR side, not the Pharisee establishment who couldn’t pass through a needles eye.

We are sorry you don’t want your kids to know what a brutal, inhuman world we live in.  We are sorry you are afraid and confused about that, and sorry that you have withdrawn from that reality.  We are not typically angry or scared; we suffer from the same incurable optimism that Ronald Reagan had (apparently) his whole life.  We try to make life better, to make it more free, but it only works if you stop fighting us as if we were evil.  While our struggle is good versus evil, you have been deluded into believing your malevolent dreams of government are for the greater good.

We are ashamed of the Pharisaeical establishment, such as Mark Sanford, who could not live up to the principles we espouse.  ‘Pride goeth before destruction,’ is a saying we have (Proverbs, in case you were wondering); and Mark Sanford was, unfortunately, an example of the truth in that saying.  But the failings of conservative individuals have never been the failings of conservative philosophy.  By contrast, collectivism (known also through the ages as fascism, socialism, communism, and the like), is filled with personally likeable, yet malevolent and philosophically disagreeable individuals.

And that’s the very point you miss: When conservative individuals fail to live up to conservatism, it is a moral failing.  When collectivist individuals fail to live up to collectivism, it is a moral victory. That is very telling about your philosophy, I think.

We are sorry that you live in a separate reality, dear Conservatives, and we are doing what we can to make things better. Fortunately for all of us, there are some adults in the room now, people who don’t fear monger with death panels and terror strikes, conspiracy theories and misinformation. The world WILL make progress, and we can’t afford to do it without you. We can’t have you fighting us tooth and nail anymore either. We can’t afford to wait for you to figure it out, dear Conservatives, so we may have to go on without you, because our future is too important to screw up, and right now, you’re not helping.

Indeed.  These adults whine about how horrible Fox News is, challenge the personal integrity of their correspondents (and not the facts they report), bow to world leaders like it’s going out of style, tell members of the media to “calm down” when they’re just doing their jobs, scream “ASTROTURF!” while the SEIU packs every photo-op they throw, use the military for a backdrop but not a strategic tool (as was intended), ad infinitum, ad nauseum.  You’re the adults?

I won’t hold my breath.

So this is my, “I’m sorry” to collectivist Americans.  We are sorry you’re failing the reality and history tests; but don’t worry, the class (oh, the irony) isn’t going to be held up on your account much longer.  2010 is coming sooner than you think.  But if you choose to progress toward collectivism, I would recommend progressing in the direction of Sweden.  You can’t stand in the way any more, and you know it.

To my conservative bretheren: Grab a bucket, let’s mop the floor with these fools.

I see that our lovely socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is offering an amendment to the health-insurance bill that would change the whole bill to a single-payer bill.  So here’s the gist of my totally crazy, probably-won’t-actually-work, Senatorial jiu-jitsu idea:

Get ten hardcore Red-State Senators to actually vote this crap into the bill.

I told you it was nuts

Now, here’s why:  The red-state Democrats can’t vote for that in final passage.  They just can’t, they’ll get crucified for it, and they all know it.  No Republican, not even Olympia Snowe could vote for final passage on that bill.  So what does that mean?

It means that if Sanders’ crackpot scheme actually made it into the bill, it’s DOA.  The whole thing is toast.  And that’s what we want.

Now we’d have to force Harry Reid to allow this amendment to the floor, but we’ve got the juice to do that, between the Republicans and the fascisti Dems.  After it gets to the floor, we have to convince around ten major conservatives to vote for this craptacular amendment.  I’d suggest Sens. Bennett (I don’t like him anyway), Inhofe, Sessions, Chambliss, Cornyn, Coburn, DeMint, Thune, Barrasso, and LeMieux (having Crist’s messenger on record for single-payer would be hilariously fun, but probably would never happen).  These are either very unlikely to lose re-election, or people who should lose re-election for past idiocy.  Hey, I can dream, right?

Now, once this thing is in, the GOP can turn around and scream from the rooftops “GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER!!!” and it will be 100% accurate, 100% immediate.  The entire tenor of the argument changes, and you can be flat-out guaranteed a long-lasting filibuster including the following Dems: Baucus (hooboy, Chairman of the Finance committee), Dodd (lives in a state where 20% of the residents work for AETNA), Lieberman, etcetera, etcetera…

Point is, if this amendment gets in, the bill never leaves the Senate.  At least, I’m fairly certain it won’t.  What do you think?

I’m being overdramatic, but this kinda ticks me off.

If you don’t have the time or are too lazy to click the link to find out exactly what’s on the other side, here’s the gist of what happened at today’s Jobs Summit:  The President walked into a room full of officials and stated:

“The tension we’ve been seeing is that what is good for the longer term may not work as an immediate short-term stimulus. We’re still getting slapped around in the Recovery Act for this,” Obama said. “The term ’shovel-ready’ — let’s be honest, it doesn’t always live up to its billing.”

You THINK?!

So now, President Photo-Op, you’ve spent three-quarters of a billion dollars of MY FUTURE EARNINGS tax dollars Chinese bonds in a failed attempt to create jobs.  And you knew that, hey, infrastructure projects may not do the trick.  Who knew?

Well for starters, the entire Republican House caucus, and all but three Republican Senators.  But let me be clear, you won.  So this debacle is YOURS, ace.  Can’t blame this on Boooooosh, nope; three quarters of a trillion dollars ($787,000,000,000) just got flushed for David Obey’s pet project file.

In my ADD-addled mind, a question occurs:  How many Afghanistan troops could we have sent to back up our existing forces, had we not blown an astronomical amount of money on this epic can of Congressional lard?  How much higher would our chances of victory be?

We’ll never know.

This story further notes:

Obama made it sound as if he was not keen on doing more of the road repavings and other faster-acting repairs that have dominated the infrastructure, which he said “may duplicate needs of the past as opposed [providing] vision.”

FACE. PALM.

Gee whiz, what tipped YOU off, Dr. Salk? It really is amazing how much TV time this windbag can fill with such a stark lack of, y’know…knowlege.  I’m 24 years old.  Seriously, I am.

I. Knew. This. Already.

And this fatuous freebooting fink has the stones to tell me — not ask, tell me — that I must buy his health insurance?

I pity the fool.

I’m a bit of a movie buff myself, as it happens; and I happen to be very pro-military.  So here are some movie references for Chris the Wide-Mouth Frog.

First up, my favorite war movie: Saving Private Ryan.  I’ve already written a lot about this for Veterans Day, so I won’t bother to rehash the whole movie.  But I would point out that Chris Matthews’ enemy is all through this clip.

Did you see him, right there at the end, grab Private Ryan by the shirt?  Did you hear him, Matthews’ enemy, demand that Private Ryan live a life worthy of his sacrifice?

In this movie, who are Chris Matthews’ allies?

How about The Patriot?  Mel Gibson really has made some good movies, and whether you love him or hate him, The Patriot had some great scenes in it.  The death of Tavington was especially climactic — after knowing Tavington’s depravity, his destruction of the innocents, we have this scene:

Did you see Matthews’ enemy?  Rebel scum (different movie, I know) were slaughtering the British armies for no good reason, right?  Remember what Tavington had done to this point, and ask yourself:  Who is Chris Matthews’ ally in that fight?

All right, enough of the (very) thinly veiled attacks on Matthews’ rationale — that veil is getting in my way.  Here’s the movie verson of what I want to say to Chris Matthews:

COL. SAMUEL TRAUTMAN: lt’s over, Johnny. lt’s over!

JOHN RAMBO: Nothing is over! Nothing! You can’t just switch it off!  lt wasn’t my war. You asked me, l didn’t ask you! l did everything to win, but someone didn’t let us win.  And at home at the airport those maggots were protesting. They spat at me, called me a baby murderer and s*** like that!  Why protest against me, when they weren’t there, didn’t experience it?

TRAUTMAN: lt was hard, but it’s in the past.

RAMBO: For you! Civilian life means nothing to me. There we had a code of honor. You watch my back, l watch yours. Here there’s nothing!

TRAUTMAN: You’re the last of an elite troop, don’t end it like this.

And then, of course, there’s the end of the second Rambo movie:

Trautman: John where are you going?
Rambo: I don’t know.
Trautman: You get a second medal of honor for this.
[Rambo looks over at the rescued POWs]
Rambo: You should give it to them. They deserve it more.
Trautman: You don’t belong here why don’t you come back with me?
Rambo: Back to what? My friends died here, let me die here.
Trautman: The war, the whole conflict may have been wrong but damn it don’t hate your country for it.
Rambo: Hate? I’d die for it.
Trautman: Then what is it you want?
Rambo: I want, what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had, wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That’s what I want!

So Chris, if you want to know what it means to support the troops, start there.  West Point isn’t “the enemy camp.”  We’ve never been your enemy.  Matter of fact, let’s look at a brief hypothetical here:  Let’s say the Taliban won.  Let’s say America became an Islamic nation, complete with Sharia law.

Chris Matthews would be executed for any number of heresies he says on a nightly basis.  The women of MSNBC would be forced off the air, and into burqas.  Keith Olbermann would be burned, and his body hung from a bridge for his support for homosexuals.  Ed Schultz’s corpse would be paraded through the streets by a mob to which conservatives serve as the main opposition.  I’ll say that again, conservatives oppose the possibility of circumstances which might lead to an angry mob that would actually harm the idiot MSNBC TV hosts.

We’re not the enemy, you pontificating pinheaded blowhard.  We’re your first, best, and only line of defense.  Step back from your petty partisanship for one bleeding second, enough to appreciate us.  That’s all we ask.

Sean Linnane writes on the FrumForum.com:

Earlier this week, news broke that three Navy SEALs were charged and may be court-martialed for allegedly punching a prisoner.  The prisoner, a high-value target (HVT) was turned over to authorities with a bloody lip.

According to a source of mine — a retired SEAL who like myself still serves in other capacities — the feeling going around the Special Operations community at Fort Bragg is that this latest development is a kneejerk reaction to the situation a couple months ago when SEAL operators rescued Captain Phillips – Captain of the Maersk Alabama – off the coast of Somalia.

[snip]

So the word on the street is that this latest development is payback for the SEALs violating the ROE in rescuing the captain of the Maersk Alabama. The Chain of Command is asserting itself, letting everybody know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t follow orders.

Holy crap on a stick.

That has got to be the most craptacular reason for a court-martial ever created; and if it’s even slightly true, I hope it nukes Rahm Emanuel’s career.

Have you ever gotten so bleeding angry at reading something that you get tunnel vision?

First, the White House didn’t want to shoot the pirates?  What in God’s name could possibly be the rationale for that — it’s not like we can do anything other than feed them if we capture them alive, and we weren’t going to let them go.  So what’s the end, if not by shooting the flippin’ PIRATES?!  That was the only action Obama had taken that I completely agreed with, and now I find out that he tried to screw that up too…

Second, You do NOT court-martial enlisted men for violating the Rules of Engagement and not have the resignation of the officer responsible on the Resolute Desk first.  The military has a chain of command for a lot of reasons, but a HUGE reason is ease of assigning blame for screwed-up missions.  That’s why you have a wet-behind-the-ears 22-year-old Second Lieutenant commanding a squad containing a 35-year-old Master Sergeant — the MSgt keeps the Lieutenant from killing his men with inexperience, and the Lieutenant keeps the civilian leadership from punishing the MSgt for doing so.

(Yes, I know there’s a lot more to that relationship, but that’s what’s applicable to this situation.)

Third, why in blazes do you punish the entire SpecOps community for one officer’s bucking of the ROE?  That’s a nuclear response from an anti-nuclear White House, and one that’s reputed to be headed by Mr. Spock.  That’s not how you respond, that’s how a four-year-old child responds — or Rahm Emanuel.

Fourth, if this is is actually punishment for the SEALs, is President Photo-Op really getting cheesed at the SEALs for allowing him the opportunity to boost his hawk credentials?  If memory serves, his poll numbers bumped up slightly, following the awesome show of deadly force against those Somalian pirates.  You’d think he’d throw them a parade, rather than punish the entire SpecOps community.

Amateur Hour just hit an all-time high.

These crackpots, who were not on the guest list, were allowed within a hair’s breadth of the President of the United States.  Before this, nobody outside of Faulkier County, VA knew who they were — or cared.  These people, who it appears are slightly less nuts than Balloon Boy’s parents, were able to penetrate Secret Service-run security AT. THE. WHITE HOUSE.

While the President was THERE.

There are dinner knives on the table; pencils don’t set off the metal detectors; al-Qaeda has proven that they can sneak a bomb through high-security checkpoints (it involves plastic explosives and a container known as a “charger”, inserted into the rectal cavity); biological and chemical agents don’t set off the metal detectors either.  Heck, a necktie and a quick movement, people, can kill a man.  Dear lord, I don’t want that to happen.

This isn’t about the idiots who figured out how to get a picture with the President, it’s the fact that the Secret Service got burned by two idiots from Moronville, Virginia.  And nobody in the media is saying that — they’re all blaming the idiots.  Understand, I’m not anti-Secret Service; just the opposite, I am very pro-Secret Service.  I just want them to do their bloody job perfectly, because when they screw up, the President can get hurt.

So let’s play a little substitution game.  Instead of the Salahi’s crashing the party, what if James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles had attended the party?

Hannah Giles is way hotter than the gate-crashing babe.  James O’Keefe is a method actor, and could conceivably have done as good a job in blowing smoke at the Secret Service.  I guaran-frickin-tee you that nobody guarding the White House gate knows who either one of them is.  Rahm might, but the Secret Service gate guard wouldn’t.  This puts the two kids who took down ACORN within a hair’s breadth of the President of the United States.

You think the media might have a problem with the Secret Service then?

We need a plan in place for when we take back Congress.  It’s not enough just to elect conservatives like Marco Rubio, Bob McDonnell, and Jim DeMint.  To take back Congress, we are also going to have to put up with the occasional Mark Kirk and Mike Castle — it’s not as if we can keep them from running, can we?  And they have their place as well - just make sure they get in the right place, that’s the trick.

Here’s what I mean.  If you’re like me, you want Roe v. Wade overturned.  If you’re like me, you want to go a step further, and start chipping away at the foundation for Roe, a decision called Griswold v. Connecticut. The penumbra argument started there, and real progress can only be made in this arena if we start attacking the cornerstones of statism.  So how do we do that sort of thing?

Make sure the Kirks and Castles of the world stay off the Senate Judiciary committee.  Stack Judiciary with DeMints, and we start getting some Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases again.

You might ask, “but where do we put Kirk and Castle?”

If they’re looking for powerful committees, I suggest the Appropriations committee — especially for Kirk.  Castle I expect to be a six-year seatwarmer for Beau Biden (Castle’s kind of old), so give him something he can help on, but won’t be expected to rise to a chairmanship — maybe Budget, Finance, or Foreign Relations.  That way, his influence on social conservatism is limited, but he is still an important member of the Senate team.

Useful idiots (or RINOs) can be just that: Useful.  That doesn’t mean we should support them whenever they run (a la Crist), but whenever they’re the last resort, put them where they can be useful to conservatism.  Kirk can be useful to conservatism — just keep him away from the Energy and Judiciary committees.

That’s the part of the plan we have been missing.  For too long, we have blindly voted for Republicans, trusting them to do the correct thing for conservatism.  But that’s clearly not enough.  We have to set the committee assignments, too.

Think of the Senate in the same way Ronald Reagan thought of the Soviet Union:

Trust, but verify.

I hesitated for about four milliseconds before starting to write this.  You’d think that it would be an unpopular decision to attack Glenn Beck on Redstate.com — it seems a bit out of place.  But he’s gone too far this time, and he needs to be called on it.

Glenn Beck thinks his nephew shouldn’t re-enlist.  By extension, I shouldn’t enlist.  Here’s the video:

Apparently, he thinks that since our Commander in Chief is more concerned with where his next photo-op will be (and how good we military types look in said photo-ops) than with how, exactly, he plans to win the war in Afghanistan, that America is unworthy of my service.

Bollocks.

What Beck has done is tell a generation of young men like me that when a man fills the office of President who is blatantly unworthy of any military leadership position (like our current President), that America is, by extension, unworthy of being protected.  America, Beck says, is not worthy of my sacrifice.  America, he claims, is not worthy of saving for the next three to seven years while Barack Obama sits behind the Resolute Desk.

What Beck is saying about Obama is essentially the same thing as Louis XIV said of himself: L’Etat, c’est moi. I am the state.  But here, in America, that has never been true — and must not be true.

A man can be unworthy of the office of President — I believe that this man, Barack Obama, is such an unworthy man.  He’s only ever shown promise in campaigns, and never shown substantive policy accomplishments.  For this reason above all, the Democrats are about to fail to pass their Holy Grail of legislation, a state takeover of health care.  But as unworthy as he is, Barack Obama is not America.  He is the President.

We have had unworthy Presidents before — Woodrow Wilson is the top of my list in that category.  Jimmy Carter is either second or third, with Teddy Roosevelt competing for that slot.  And yet, in all those times, America was worthy of my sacrifice.  America is worth fighting for, no matter how awful her President, because America is not a man.

America is an idea.

America is that smoke-on-the-wind idea that free, unfettered men can create for themselves a life better than any the State can provide them.  America is the idea that any person, of great or inferior birth, can rise to be a mighty force in the world.  America is opportunity, freedom of action, and ownership of one’s own destiny.  That has always been worthy of my defense, of my sacrifice, of my life.

Glenn Beck apparently doesn’t get that.

So bugger off, Beck.  You tell your nephew whatever you want to tell him — but don’t tell me that America isn’t worth my service.

If I don’t fight for her, who will?

I don’t have a whole ton of time to get this down, so this is going to be a bit quick and dirty.  Here’s my main thought:  How unbelievably politically bad for President Obama would this headline be, E-Day Plus One:

Mark Kirk Wins Obama’s Senate Seat in Shocker

Well, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as if Kirk picked off Obama’s seat in Illinois, Mike Castle picked off Joe Biden’s seat in Delaware, Rudy Giuliani picked off Hillary Clinton’s seat in New York, and Harry Reid lost in Nevada.

All of which could legitimately happen.

And this isn’t even counting the storyline of Marco Rubio.  It isn’t counting any of the slew of House Republicans that will win. It isn’t counting the somewhat longer shot at knocking off Chris Dodd with a WWE-associated personality.  It’s not counting Arlen Specter losing in the primary, only to have the man who beat him lose by five to ten points to Toomey.

Oh, this is going to be so much fun. No daylight, people.

I like the phrase “Let’s Go RINO Hunting!”  We should use that more often.  Anyway, so after we beat the RINOs…we’re going to need to hunt bigger game.

Let’s go DINO hunting.