So Barack Obama says we need to appease the world by changing our behavior.

Here’s the actual quote.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

As Mark Steyn points out, apparently “leadership” in Obama’s world is finding out what the world wants us to do… and then doing it.

Jim has an outstanding post that I believe goes right along with Obama’s statement about “global leadership”. First, the relevant quote from Obama:

“Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That’s what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That’s what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That’s what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela – these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union.

And a key point from Jim:

The Soviet Union never killed 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania by crashing jets into skyscrapers. The definition of a “serious threat” is different today than it was a generation ago.

These two quotes from Obama scare the crap out of me. They indicate a naivete about the ways of the world that I would expect from my seven-year old son, not a U.S. Senator and presidential candidate.

Obama’s firstly saying the rest of the world should be able to impose its vision of America on us. Fine. He doesn’t want us to be a superpower. But that will create a leadership vacuum, and there’s no shortage of countries out there who would love to step up. More importantly, there’s an ideology that will jump at the chance to exploit our weakness, and as Jim points out, they don’t need to be a massive country in terms of land or resources in order to do us immeasurable harm.

Considering some experts are calling a nuclear detonation in Washington, D.C. inevitable in the next two decades, a man who thinks of threats in terms of geographic size isn’t just naive. He’s dangerous to the future safety of my own children.

So we create a leadership vacuum our enemies will exploit, and then we will fail to recognize the threat our enemies pose to this country. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

“Obama ‘08: Restoring America’s Place In the World… One Radioactive American City At A Time”

I swear I’m not just being contrary, but I’ve got to take issue with a couple of Marshall’s recent blog posts. Honestly, this has me questioning my own intelligence, because Marshall’s one of the brightest guys I know.

First… the foie gras ban. I’ve been talking about this since it went into effect, so I should be the happiest talk show host in America… but I’m not. Not after reading about how this went down. Daley acted like the typical petty tyrant that he is in ramrodding his repeal through the City Council, including not letting the original author of the bill speak in opposition to the repeal.

The problem with applauding strongarm tactics like this when it benefits you is that a tyrant doesn’t really care about you. Sure, there may be times where you’ll find agreement, but that’s of no consequence to the tyrant. If he moves to the left or to the right… he’s moving and you’re following along.

Well, (pardon my French) screw that. Screw the applauding of the right result and the wrong process. Screw the applauding of simply getting our way, when we disregard the American way in the process. Yeah, I want the foie gras ban to go away. I also want more politicians to have some respect for the rule of law. And I care more about that than eating my fatty duck liver. I’d rather exercise civil disobedience and eat in a “duckeasy” than rely on one man to dole out my freedoms at his whim.

As for the listing of the polar bear, it’s a sad damn day when an animal population that is NOT currently losing population (all of the polar bear populations are currently stable and the number of polar bears has grown approximately fivefold over the past 30-odd years) can be listed as threatened. The listing of the polar bear will hurt the Native American populations in Nunavut and elsewhere, and will actually reduce federal funding for polar bear research. All because someone says 30 years from now we may see the bears threatened. And as the Foundry points outthese things sometimes come with unintended consequences.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “endgames”. It’s very easy these days to get caught up in the back-and-forth of legislative battles that move the football a yard or two either way, but I’m convinced that most people don’t give much thought to what a touchdown for their party would really mean (sorry for the inartful football analogy. I blame Paul Helmke).

It seems kind of silly to me that we’d invest so much time, energy, and emotion on pieces of legislation that move us one step closer towards an ideal, while ignoring the larger discussion of whether or not these ideals even work. Are free-markets really a good idea? Are the “needs of the community” worth more than the “rights of the individual”? What are the real world implications of a progressive ideal?

There’s one place in this country where the progressive ideal reigns supreme. It’s a college campus. And it scares the hell out of me.

The left has long complained about “free speech zones” set up by the evil Republicans. Too bad the idea came from colleges back in the 1960’s. Today, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the 1st Amendment is threatened at 75% of our nation’s colleges and universities. Even worse, the larger the school, the more likely it is to have speech codes.

How about the 2nd Amendment? Yeah, I know. But not only are legally owned firearms banned on the vast majority of college campuses, you can’t even talk about them. At Tarrant County College in Texas, for instance, students who wanted to protest the ban on legally owned firearms on campus were told they could only wear their empty holsters in the designated “free speech zone” and students were told they could NOT wear their “Students for Concealed Carry on Campus” t-shirts… at all.

So in a progressive world, free speech has its place, as long as it’s pre-approved by the powers that be and regulated to specific locations. The right to keep and bear arms is relegated to the dustbin of history, and don’t even think about protesting the decision made by those in charge.

On college campuses, equality has been replaced with multiculturalism. If you want to see a segregated society, take a look at your local state university. This is nothing new, but the trend is for more seperation, not less. We have seperate graduation ceremonies for people of different skin colors these days, and it’s celebrated, not condemned! Viva la diversity… as long as you keep your diverse self over there.

And what of the actual purpose of higher ed? You know… educating folks? How do the progressives fare? Frankly, it seems not well. Piggybacking on this thought, if progressives aren’t allowed to hurt people’s feelings… how can people be allowed to fail?

The result can be something like this.

Who is to blame when students fail? If many students fail — a majority even — does that demonstrate faculty incompetence, or could it point to a problem with standards?

These are the questions at the center of a dispute that cost Steven D. Aird his job teaching biology at Norfolk State University. Today is his last day of work, but on his way out, he has started to tell his story — one that he suggests points to large educational problems at the university and in society. The university isn’t talking publicly about his case, but because Aird has released numerous documents prepared by the university about his performance — including the key negative tenure decisions by administrators — it is clear that he was denied tenure for one reason: failing too many students. The university documents portray Aird as unwilling to compromise to pass more students.

I’d encourage you to read the whole thing. Norfolk State faculty say that the administration “encourages” professors to pass at least 70% of their students… regardless of whether or not they deserve it. Buck the trend, lose your job.

Needless to say, I’m not an expert on college campuses, and there may be plenty of evidence out there that would prove me wrong. I hope to hear it, because I look at college campuses and see places where progressive politics and policies have been entrenched for decades, places where they are much closer to a “progressive endgame” than society-at-large… and I don’t see much of America anymore.

Looking at that story showing 64% of Democrat voters want the race to continue, I can’t help but wonder if this part of the 2004 Democrat Party platform has anything to do with it.

To those who are threatened, we pledge protection; to those who are victims, we promise
justice; to those who are hopeless, we offer hope. And to all Americans who seek a better future for
themselves, for their loved ones, and for our country, we say: your cause is our own.

How can you be the party of hope when you’re telling the first woman who could become president that it’s hopeless? Could it simply be that for many Democrats, hurt feelings aren’t something the party believes in anymore?

**Update**

Looks like we might be able to peg the number of Democrats who believe this at roughly 29%.

29% of Democrats say she should run an Independent campaign for the White House. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats disagree. Clinton supporters are evenly divided on the question.

Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski was murdered a few days ago.

Mayor Michael Nutter quickly placed blame on NRA members.

“They owe an apology to the family…”

On Wednesday, officers arrested the last remaining suspect in Sgt. Liczbinski’s death. Mayor Nutter told reporters he confronted Eric Floyd.

“I looked him dead in the eye when he came in and told him how disappointed I was in him.”

Tougher talk for the legal gun owners in this country than for the man responsible for the death of a Philadelphia police officer? Welcome to Philadelphia.

Dear Senator Obama,

I’m writing this letter because I know this has been a rough 48 hours for you. I can’t imagine the shock of finding out that your pastor for 20 years, the man who married you, who baptized your children, who brought you to Jesus… has been hoodwinking you for the past two decades.

Oh sure, you’d heard stories over the years of things he’d said, but it was all secondhand. Maybe he said something that made you squirm a little in your seat once or twice, but you never heard anything like what he said at the National Press Club! No, for that your Pastor waited until you weren’t in church, and then he’d let loose. What must it feel like to find out these things with everyone else!

Then, of course, there’s the egg on your face. For months now talk show hosts like Hannity, Hewitt, Rush (and dare I mention myself?) have been saying these comments were vile. Now you’ve seen the light, but how embarrassing must it be to know that these folks are going to crow about this on their shows? And drafting that letter of apology to them… whew, I don’t know how you’re going to do it. Just remember, you had the wool pulled over your eyes. You were bamboozled!

I mean, last month you said:

“He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

And now today it’s:

“He was never my quote unquote, spiritual adviser, my quote unquote spiritual mentor, he was my pastor.”

(Better check the Chicago papers on that though, Senator. I seem to recall a 2004 story in which you talked about the three spiritual mentors you had. James Meeks, Father Michael Pfleger, and Jeremiah Wright. I’m just trying to help you avoid any future controversies.)

From like family a month ago to just “my pastor” today. It’s like you’ve managed to wipe your memory of that close kinship you two shared for twenty years. That’s amazing, though a therapist may say you’re just blocking those memories out of your brain because they’re too painful.

Well, if it makes you feel any better Senator… this whole episode has been tough for me too.

You see, two of my five kids are actually my stepkids. We don’t make a big deal out of it. In fact, they’ve always called me “Dad”. Just like your father, who wasn’t around when you were growing up, my two oldest kids haven’t seen their biological father in years. And like you, they’re the offspring of a white mother and a black father. Our other three kids are as pale as milk, so we’ve gotten our share of odd comments over the years. I’m sure you remember similar comments when you were a kid and were out with your grandparents.

But as a parent, you try to deal with it the best you can. You tell your kids that most people are just ignorant, and that skin color doesn’t make you any different. You thank God that the civil rights movement has been as successful as it has, and that the comments you do get are few and far between. You teach your children that people should be judged on the contents of their character, not the color of their skin.

Then Jeremiah Wright becomes the story of the day and now you’re trying to figure out what to tell your 7-year old when he asks if it’s true that he’s different than his older brother and sister, and if we love him more or less than we love them. You wonder if your 17-year old son and your 21-year old daughter have bought into what Rev. Wright is peddling, and if the bond of family is stronger than race-based rhetoric. And yes, you wonder why it took Senator Barack Obama twenty years to figure out Jeremiah Wright when most of the rest of us figured it out in about five minutes.

Sorry Senator, but I’m starting to wonder if your comments distancing yourself from Reverend Wright are really sincere. I’m also wondering if you were really that close with him to begin with. I’m wondering a lot of things about you, but it boils down to one concern: are you lying to us now, or were you lying to us all along about Reverend Wright? Either way, it would make you the worst kind of politician. You know the stereotype: slimy, oozing with contempt for the voters, willing to say anything to get elected. The exact opposite of how you present yourself, basically.

And I don’t know how you get beyond that Senator. You’re either A) the worst judge in character the world has ever seen or B) another lying politician who just wants to get elected and thinks Americans have the intelligence of tree stumps. Either way, when it comes to the content of your character… you fail. You could have walked out of that church at any point over the past twenty years. You could have used your big speech in Philadelphia to put to rest this issue, not claim the Reverend Wright as a member of your family. Because of your failure of character, you’re now merely following the conventional political wisdom instead of exhibiting true leadership and principle.

But don’t worry Senator. If you’re right about the American people, we’ll be too distracted by American Idol and the price of gasoline to remember any of this come November.

Sincerely,

Cam Edwards

On tonight’s Hugh Hewitt show, Connor gets in nearly as many words as I do.

My heart’s all a-flutter today with the news that Bill Cope has paid a visit to our dusty corner of the Internet. Here’s what he has to say (I’d hate for Bill Cope to accuse me of burying his comments when they should be prominently displayed!):

This afternoon, with nothing else to do, I Googled myself, just to see what’s cooking on the Bill Cope burner. And how could I not enter a site labeled “I Heart Bill Cope?”

My jubilation was short-lived, of course, as anyone who’s read the article can imagine. It seems Cam Edwards doesn’t heart me anywhere near as much as he let on in the title. In fact, Mr. Edwards has used his blog to dismiss not one but two of my recent columns. Normally, I don’t respond to detractors — especially the on-line sort. If I cared that much what other people think, it’s unlikely I would be writing opinions in the first place. Secondly, of all the people I don’t take seriously, bloggers come very near the top of the list.

Still, Mr. Edwards said some things for which I need to thank him: notably, that I should “stay classy.” You can’t imagine how pleased I am to have my classiness acknowledged, especially coming from a radio talk show host. Yes, Cam, I explored your blog “manifesto,” in which you publicly admit to being a talk show host. Why, I know people who would put talk show hosts just below guys who sell night crawlers out of their kitchens, but I’m not one of them. No sir, I rank radio talk show hosts at least as high as telemarketers and bloggers. And if anyone ever doubted your personal sense of “classy,” I recommend they read the Manifesto feature of your blog — particularly that line about how you and your drinking buddies don’t want to talk about Lindsey Lohan anymore “until she eats something and gets her chest back.” Ah, now that’s class.

And how appropriate that Cam and his buds fashioned their blog after their Friday night boozing sessions. I have always felt that conservatives were at their wittiest when they had a few drinks under their belts — in their own minds if nowhere else.

But on to Cam’s opinions of my opinions. At present, I will address only his comments on the Jonah Goldberg column, as I have plans for a sequel to the “ loony bastard gun nuts” column in the near future, and I want to save my best stuff for that. Surely, as a fellow writer, Cam can understand . . . uh . . . but I forgot. Cam’s only a blogger. My mistake.

(Before we leave the gun nuts matter entirely, though, I should point out that the talk show Cam is host of runs on something called NRA News. Yes, that’s right — it’s a propaganda organ of the National Rifle Association. I thought this might help us with his perspective on the concealed weapons matter, since he neglected to include the word “stooge” in his job description.)

Now, about that Jonah Goldberg book, Liberal Fascism . No I didn’t read it. Nor am I embarrassed to admit that I criticized the dull ideas that were widely disseminated from a book I didn’t read. For Christ’s Sake, it’s not like I was doing a book report on a Dickens’ novel and slipped by on CliffsNotes. If Cam feels he has to read every mediocre word of a mediocre writer to understand the mediocre message therein, let him. It’s not his fault some of us get the picture much quicker than he seems to.

Still, I have to wonder what nuances I missed, as Cam insists. Was it Goldberg’s ridiculous “guilt by trivial coincidence” which implies that, since many Nazis were vegetarians, and many liberals are vegetarians, therefore Liberals must be Nazis?

Or did it have to do with Goldberg’s twist of both logic and history that would have us believe, since some American populist movements were liberal, and since fascism started as a populist movement (as did the KKK, Posse Comitatus and those knot-head militias that were flopping about in the woods not so long ago, pretending to be soldiers), ergo Liberals must be fascists?

Truth be told, if Cam is going to accuse someone of showing little regard for facts or truth, maybe he ought to be a bit more specific as to which facts and truths he has in mind. I mean, if he truly read the book like he says he did, and if I didn’t read it like I said I didn’t, why (both in the original column and here) have I provided more example of what’s actually in the book than Mr. “Reading Comprehension” Edwards? Surely, he remembers more than how “fascinating” he found Goldberg’s opus to be. (Incidentally, in answer to Cam’s claim that “anyone who’s read Liberal Fascism will tell you . . . ,“ go to David Neiwert’s review at www.prospect.org and get yourself a finely-detailed accounting of exactly how absurd Goldberg’s crap is. As I said in the column, the only audience for right-wing bullshit anymore is right-wingers.)

In closing, I must also thank Cam for mentioning my beloved publisher, Boise Weekly , to which I have supplied a column a week for over 13 years. (Over 200 Bill Cope columns in the archives, so if you don’t like what I’m saying here, stay away.) Yes, it’s a small paper. Yet it is a paper. People own it, people read it, people get paid to write for it, and it amounts to a great deal more solid substance than inert Internet gas. Three owners, five publishers and more editors than I can remember have deemed my “semi-literate arguments” worthy of print. And I’m confident — relatively — that if Junior works hard, learns to write without depending on links to supply 80-percent of his material, practices thinking with his own brain rather than Wayne LaPierre’s, and comes up with a more sophisticated brand of snottiness than “lobotomized tree frog,” he may yet write well enough to move out of the blog barrios and find a little paper in his own neighborhood that would publish him.

Where to start? Honestly, I’ll let most of the personal stuff (and even the professional attacks) go. It’s obvious Bill Cope has no more listened to the show than he’s read “Liberal Fascism”. Otherwise he would have heard our interviews with Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign, Russ Ford from Ammunition Coding Systems, Ray Schoenke from AHSA, and the countless gun control supporters that populate our “man on the street” interviews. If propoganda consists of hearing what gun control supporters have to say and then picking their argument apart, I guess I’m guilty. It should be noted though that our nightly polls would indicate we have a small but dedicated following among some gun control supporters.

Also, if I don’t respond to every single criticism from Bill Cope, please don’t assume that I’m conceding the point. Frankly, I’m not bored enough right now to Google my own name, and I’m writing this in bits and pieces while I’m working on other things. I’d like to post this sometime this afternoon though, so I may cut short a few arguments for the sake of brevity.

As for picking on the fact that I posted this on a blog… Bill Cope has cut me to the quick. It’s true we don’t deliver 35,000 free copies of this blog on a weekly basis to the neighborhood bars and restaurants in the greater Boise area. We exist only on the Internet, a place where amateurs like a public relations exectutive, an award winning journalist and author, and a nationally broadcast talk show host can sit in their jammies and spew their venom between hours of “World of Warcraft”.

And yes, we do have a bar theme for the blog. It comes from those halcyon Friday nights in 2004 when the three of us would gather around a table to share food and drink and talk for hours. It’s called friendship, Bill. It’s not just a conservative thing. You might want to try it sometime.

A quick note about Bill’s defense of his review of Liberal Fascism, which he neglected to read. Bill says:

If Cam feels he has to read every mediocre word of a mediocre writer to understand the mediocre message therein, let him. It’s not his fault some of us get the picture much quicker than he seems to.

Well, I read every word of not one, but two of your columns. What does that say about me? As for you getting the picture much quicker… you got the picture without reading a word. You’re trying to tell me you the Literary Kreskin? Quick tell me the plot of the next J.K. Rowling novel… we’ll make a fortune!

Bill also says:

Truth be told, if Cam is going to accuse someone of showing little regard for facts or truth, maybe he ought to be a bit more specific as to which facts and truths he has in mind. I mean, if he truly read the book like he says he did, and if I didn’t read it like I said I didn’t, why (both in the original column and here) have I provided more example of what’s actually in the book than Mr. “Reading Comprehension” Edwards? Surely, he remembers more than how “fascinating” he found Goldberg’s opus to be. (Incidentally, in answer to Cam’s claim that “anyone who’s read Liberal Fascism will tell you . . . ,“ go to David Neiwert’s review at www.prospect.org and get yourself a finely-detailed accounting of exactly how absurd Goldberg’s crap is. As I said in the column, the only audience for right-wing bullshit anymore is right-wingers.)

I finally stopped walking around with my copy a couple of weeks ago (it’s currently in the back seat of my car) and didn’t feel like walking down to get it, to be honest. It’s a serious book. I don’t know that there a a great many little anecdotes that stick out, because it’s distinctly not saying that vegetarianism=fascism. It’s the sum of the whole. And I say that because I’ve read the book.

But I think the real issue here is that Bill is reacting this way because he simply can’t believe he could be a fascist, liberal or otherwise. Fascists are mean, and Bill isn’t mean (unless it’s to people who deserve it, like people who stand in the way of “progress”). But no one’s saying you’re mean, Bill Cope. We’re saying you’re a nice fascist.

Take Bill’s issue with allowing bars and restaurant owners to decide for themselves whether or not to let Right to Carry holders come into their establishments. Most of us would agree the State has a compelling public interest to prohibit drinking while carrying a firearm. But does the State’s interest really extend to prohibiting people with a Right to Carry license from even entering the establishment? There are now 40 states with shall-issue RTC, and how often do we hear of drunken RTC holders shooting up a bar or restaurant? Why? Because RTC are responsible citizens, and they obey the law (there have been plenty of studies showing RTC holders are arrested and convicted at far lower rates than the general population).

If the state’s interest extends to banning a practice that causes an infintismal amount of people harm, then what’s to stop the State from simply prohibiting driving after consuming one drink? A blood alcohol level of .01 or .02 would certainly be okay. Heck, you can’t tell me that drunk drivers kill more people each year than drunken RTC holders. Why not simply ban drinking in public? Or require that bars get rid of their parking lots?

Why not ban dancing? New York City has. Dancing makes you hot and thirsty, which makes you consume more alcohol, which results in higher drinking and driving rates.

Where does the ever loving arms of the State ever end? Where is there a place for personal responsibility in the world that Bill wants? What individual freedom do we have? Where is right to exercise our own judgement?

Fascism is militaristic, and operates in a heightened sense of emergency. For every “War on Terror” we’ve got a “gun crisis” or a “global warming emergency” or a “war on poverty”. Bill, look at what the “war on obesity” has brought us? We’ve got people suing restaurants because they ate too much fatty food for too long and got fat. What’s the answer? To ban all bad food? And just as the progessives say the “War on Terror” can never truly be over, the same is true for the liberal fascist wars.

You’re a liberal fascist Bill. It doesn’t make you a bad person. But it does mean you should read the book.

Back in 2004, I moved to Washington, D.C.’s suburbs. It was a crazy time for the market, with people offering 20 or 30 thousand dollars above asking prices for homes. Since we were moving to a new place, my wife and I decided the prudent thing to do would be to rent our home for a year to decide if we liked living where we did.

Well, a year went by and we decided that yes, in fact, we really did like our neighborhood in northern Virginia. The problem was, after a year the home prices had skyrocketed to a point that we didn’t feel comfortable buying. So we continued to rent with the expectation that one day the bubble would burst and the prices would come down.

Lo and behold, that day has come. Homes in our neighborhood are now selling for $100,000 less than they were a year ago in some cases (though still about $120,000 more than when we moved here), and if the prices keep going down, we may well decide to buy a home in the near future. In the meantime, we’ve continued saving our money, have pared down our credit card debt, and have even started a vacation fund to save money for family trips. In short, we have not lived beyond our means.

But now I read that Barack Obama thinks it’s heartless to not help those who, unlike me, got in over their heads. People like Mauricio, recently featured in a WaPo story about illegal aliens fleeing Prince William County, Virginia.

The man, whose name is Mauricio and who is Salvadoran, zipped his jacket against the wind whipping across the dark, vacant parking lot as he walked out of the store toward a borrowed car.

That morning, his electricity had been cut off. The next day, he and 11-year-old Erica would be moving into the basement of a neighbor’s house. On this night, they would make do with candles.

It was the latest blow in a year of calamities: In April, the interest rate on Mauricio’s ill-advised mortgage suddenly spiked, more than doubling his monthly payments. In May, he lost his job as a house painter. In June, he had to sell his van. In July, his third child was born, and with no insurance, he started skipping mortgage payments to cover the hospital bills. In October, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In November, he sent his wife and two U.S.-born children to El Salvador.

December brought the worst setback yet: Mauricio bounced a $460 check he had sent the Department of Homeland Security to renew his temporary legal status, transforming him from legal to illegal immigrant.

In January, he received notice to vacate his house. Two weeks ago, the water was cut off. A week ago, his Virginia driver’s license expired, and without legal status, he can no longer renew it.

Mauricio and Erica turned onto a side street pocked with darkened, empty houses and pulled up to a brick house with mustard shutters. A plastic barrel stood under the gutter spout. Mauricio had been using it to collect rainwater to heat so Erica could take baths.

Inside, it was cold and pitch black. Mauricio lit a candle and handed it to Erica. She dripped the wax onto the kitchen table to make a candle holder.

Next, they went into Erica’s bedroom. She hugged a stuffed dog to her chest as she watched her father stand a candle on her dresser.

Finally, they walked into Mauricio’s bedroom. As he lit his candle, it illuminated a large, framed photograph of him and his wife embracing the children. Mauricio stood for a moment, looking up at their grinning faces, before walking out of the room.

We’re supposed to feel sorry for Mauricio. I feel badly for his daughter, having to live in such conditions because Mom and Dad thought they could easily finance the American Dream, even if they didn’t make enough money to pull it off.

It used to be that we wanted our kids to have a better life than we did. I’ve heard the stories of my grandparents immigrating to the United States. My grandfather worked his rear off to be able to send my dad to an exclusive prep school in Massachusetts (albeit as a “townie”). My own father worked multiple blue collar jobs while attending Brown University on the G.I. Bill after WWII, all to make sure that he could provide for his wife and daughter. He didn’t try to buy the McMansion at age 25. He didn’t drive the 1950 equivalent of a BMW. He didn’t require immediate gratification.

It’s as if we as Americans are chanting, “What do we want? The American Dream! When do we want it? Now!!!” and no one is explaining that we’re entitled to the pursuit of happiness… not happiness itself. We’re not guaranteed a McMansion or an expensive foreign car. We have to work for these things. Some of us may make choices that make it more difficult to buy those nice things (having five kids comes to mind). But we are not entitled to government provided happiness. Nor is the government supposed to make sure we never fail. If that’s the case, then why did I waste my time doing the prudent thing? Shouldn’t I have just gone ahead and purchased a home above my means in the hope that the government would make it all okay if I got in over my head?

When I do the right thing, I do not want my tax dollars going to subsidize somebody else’s bad decisions. Besides the affront to individual responsibility, perhaps someone smarter than I am can tell me what this will do to housing prices? Will they be artificially propped up because of government intervention? Will this in fact prevent the prices from dropping to a point that responsible people like me could take advantage of the market? What a blow that would be… government intervention impeding my right to pursue happiness at the expense of helping provide happiness to those who just didn’t want to wait.

Jim: I’m amazed at how the political class is treating this issue as who can do the most for the Mauricios — or worse, the house-flippers and no-money-down crowd of the world. Anything that gives off a whiff of a bailout will be the welfare issue for this decade, but instead of able-bodied urban poor who collect government checks when they should be working, the target of taxpayer resentment will be gambling house-flippers who priced the responsible buyers out of the market.

Over at the American Thinker, J.R. Dunn says 2008 “marks the end of liberalism as a governing force in the same way that 1968 marked the end of liberalism as a political doctrine.”

Yes, but only if you believe 2009 will be the year that giant, man-eating bunnies will become our new Overlords.

Dunn goes on to make his case, which amounts to a laundry list of Democratic scandals. Spitzer and McGreevey get prominent mention. Dunn makes the usual conservative case against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as well:

Barack Obama was supposed to be another matter. Obama has ascended on a cloud of pure moral superiority and nothing else. That has now evaporated, thanks to impolitic comments from his wife and the news that he has for two decades belonged to what amounts to a racist cult. Obama has nothing else to offer in the way of experience or achievements. Beyond his current difficulties, there lie his continuing and as yet unexplained entanglement with Tony Rezko (He barely knew the man, he insists. All he did was show Rezko his new house before closing. I always clear major purchases with people I scarcely know, don’t you?), along with pending revelations concerning his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former terrorist who began his career as one of the driving forces of the Weather Underground.

Obama’s response, his “Kennedyesque” speech on race, was in fact purely Clintonian in that it attempted to transform his failings into virtues while placing the blame on the country as a whole. (Not to mention his innocent typical white grandmother.) In less than two weeks, Obama has succeeded in lowering himself to the same level as Madame Hillary. Quite an achievement.

The problem is that Dunn, like so many other conservatives these days, lays out the case against the liberals without making the case FOR conservatives. Dunn says:

2008 is being promoted as the year of the Democrats. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to see this as anything but media hype. Weak as the Republicans may be, they do boast such figures as Schwarzenegger, Jindal, Crist, and Coburn among many others, not to mention a presidential candidate who, whatever his drawbacks, is a different order of being than the opposition.

But there have been danger signs. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of “conservative” politicians who have adapted the liberal style, masking their own flaws with acceptable rhetoric. The latest of these is Mike Huckabee, who presented himself as a conservative messiah while governing Arkansas like… well, like a typical governor of Arkansas. Liberalism has demonstrated that these tactics lead nowhere. We must be careful not to succumb.

Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation’s back.

If you’ve read my favorite book of the year, then you’ve at least been exposed to the theory that liberalism (and liberal fascism in particular) is ALREADY here, and can be found in both Democrat and Republican policies. The center has inched leftward in many ways, and I’ve heard very few people explain why this is a bad thing.

I’m sure that Dunn is writing for a conservative audience and therefore doesn’t feel the need to explain why and how conservatism is a better philosophy than liberalism. But his argument that 2008 is the year liberalism dies seems far more like wishful thinking than insightful analysis, and that’s a shame.

Dunn says “Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far.” That’s true. The problem is, sometimes they’ll take you far enough that you can get into the White House, or Congress, or a governor’s mansion. And until conservatives can effectively explain why our philosophy and ideology leads to a better life, snarking about liberals won’t do much but cheer up the choir.

Jim: Every political movement looks its worst when the public has gotten to see its failures — or failures committed in its name — up close and personal. The liberalism of Bill Clinton’s first two years, and the Carter-era Democratic control of the White House, House, and Senate, is long forgotten. Most of Obama’s youngest supporters have no memory of the Iranian hostage crisis, gas lines, “malaise”, etc. Even the Clinton administration’s early botching of health care reform, the failure to provide armored vehicles and worldwide perception of defeat of U.S. military forces in Somalia, Jocelyn Elders’ pledge to teach masturbation in schools, even Clinton’s failed effort to bring sides together to avoid the cancellation of the World Series — these are long-forgotten as examples of what happens when the left gets their hands on the controls of government.

Right now, Americans have seen what happens when a country is invaded based on faulty intelligence, with limited discussion of the commitment of blood and treasure required to complete the task. They have seen Republican Congressmen go to jail for corruption, so-called conservatives spend like there’s no tomorrow, and several Bush appointees fall well short of what the moment demands. They’ve seen a personal lawyer nominated for the Supreme Court. They’ve seen a Republican senator withdraw his resignation after getting caught toe-tapping in men’s rooms. Failures of the Democrats and the left are dusty memories; failures of Republicans and the right are in living color above the fold. That’s not media bias, that’s just a matter of where and when.

Conservatives can say that liberals have a bunch of ideas that sound good in theory and always fall apart in practice — but Americans may need to see it to believe it again. The American voter has a remarkable capacity to unlearn quickly.