Sorrow

Here's my game summary:



And with that out of the way, some thoughts about college football.

College football is like the ancient world, and I love them both for similar reasons. Everyone has their city-state. Each city-state has its peculiar rituals, cults, symbols. They go out to fight each other. Victory is more than just victory, and defeat more than just defeat. Everything that happens has a relation to the mythical figures and events of the distant past that also help construct your identity and the cohesion of the community. Every action has a context beyond the normal. It's the poetry that colors a prosaic world.

We treat college football the same way; at least, some of us do. Michigan fans use the hiring of Bo Schembechler as a template for Rich Rodriguez. He's a great coach because he's making them work hard like Bo did; he's a terrible coach because he isn't from Bo's coaching lineage. Charles Woodson became like a second Desmond Howard when he ran back the punt against Ohio State and then won the Heisman. You stand outside until the final whistle of a miserable game in the miserable cold, because if you're honest, it isn't about being entertained--it's about being part of something bigger than you. ("The team!" -- Bo.)

The colors, the songs, the places the former players and coaches--it all combines into a complex and vibrant tapestry of legend and tradition capable of evoking everything that is highest and lowest in humanity. (It's important for Michigan fans frustrated with this season and contemplating Coach Rod to remember the "lowest" and strive for the "highest.")

All this said, it's important to have a sense of perspective. The kingdom of God is so incredibly important compared to these earthly things. Unlike our sports teams, it will never pass away, and it has the power to change people's lives.

Still, in a society that seems determined to make life as mediocre and prosaic as possible, college football has a way of calling us out of our materialistic, individualistic slumber. And for that reason, this silly but violent game provides real value.

Anyway...there goes another year. The worst year in decades for U-M. Nothing left but to have patience, look to the future.

Oh, and root against all the teams we hate that are still in it.

BEAT OHIO STATE

Sorry I haven't been posting lately; this grad school thing takes a lot of your time, as it turns out. Next semester should be better...

But in the meanwhile...today. Today is The Game. The beleaguered Wolverines, who will miss a bowl game for the first time since 1974, travel to Columbus to look for redemption against their arch-rivals, the Ohio State Buckeyes, who are playing for yet another Big Ten championship. Michigan's starting QB is Nick Sheridan, a former walk-on without size or arm strength. Ohio State's starter is Terrelle Pryor, 6'6", 235 lbs, with a sub-4.4 forty, who chose Ohio State over Michigan in the spring. Ohio State has won four straight and is likely to make it five today against first-year coach Rich Rodriguez.

Oh. And it's the biggest rivalry in American sports.

BEAT THE BUCKEYES

Conservative Revolution

Since I seem to have come under some scrutiny for my posts recently, I thought I'd write a bit about where I am now that the election is over and we've all had some time to think about conservatism going forward.

My staunch conservative friends who read this blog know I'm not one of those mushy-headed folks who thinks that Republicans should sacrifice principle for electoral gain. Not in the least. And the seeds of my change in thinking were not planted by my moving to Ann Arbor, but during the summer when I read, among other things, The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.

No, I do not think Republicans in general are heartless, or that they don't care about the poor. I think they are extremely well-intentioned and personally charitable people, more so than their left-wing counterparts. But as far as politics goes, they lack vision, and seem to exist largely to try to stop the advance of socialism. For that reason, it seems that, these days, conservatives are just libertarians who also want to stop abortions.

But conservatives have a competing vision for society. We believe government exists to advance human dignity. We believe human dignity is composed of many things, things which cannot be summed up in a political program or tract. They include, but are not limited to, certain freedoms, obligations, and relationships. These things that comprise human dignity are best worked out on a local, community and family basis; the results of these negotations--tradition--generally ought to be respected. We believe dependence on government, family and community breakdown, and callousness toward the most vulnerable in society destroy human dignity.

But since the introduction of welfare especially, the game has changed. Those local-level negotiations have gone out the window as government has subsidized an overly individualistic, materialistic lifestyle. Social institutions that could take the place of the government dole hardly exist anymore, having been crowded out by government. These are truths that conservatives cannot afford to ignore.

The game has changed. The danger with left-wing politics is that it doesn't just destroy what could be a truly liberal society...it also destroys the foundations upon which the entire edifice of a healthy civilizations stands. Before we rebuild that civilization, we're going to have to lay many of the foundations anew.

Lowering taxes and eliminating federal programs is desirable, but not in the short run. We may not like people being dependent on government, but we should be similarly conscious of the human toll that blind implementation of ideological programs will exact.

Winning Again

That's what The Shadow-Liner wants to talk to conservatives about, and he starts things off with an excellent post about defeatism. (Read it all!) Here's part:

A sense of history is important at times like these. Society, as Burke wrote, is ". . . a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society." We do dishonor to mankind as a whole--past, present, and future--if we flee before all hope is lost, perhaps even when all hope is lost.

Precisely.

Republicans were rightly booted by the American people. Now it's time to figure out how better to apply our time-honored principles to the problems of American society today. That, I believe, is what my next post will be about. Stay tuned!

The Rise of Radical Secularism

Just read a fantastic book review on NRO by Joseph Morrison Skelly about Herb London's new book, America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion. (Psst: You should read it, too.) Obligatory excerpt, but it's all worth reading:

London identifies five developments in our time that have paved the way for the ascendancy of radical secularism. They include the rise of multiculturalism; the decay of traditional religion; the degeneration of the liberal virtue of tolerance into an unwillingness to discriminate (relativism, in other words); transnationalism, which is “the effort to reduce or eliminate the national heritage of European states through continental harmonization” — and a phenomenon creeping into American life; and “a loss of existential confidence that is at the same time a failure of nerve.” There is a historical dimension to this process, too, since the assault upon established religion has deep roots in the West, including Friedrich Nietzsche, as mentioned above, and extending back to the radical French branch of the Enlightenment, which the author acknowledges early on in his book.

This is reason number one why no thoughtful Christian, in my estimation, should be voting Democratic. I think a lot of Christians see the Democrats as caring more for the disadvantaged--something Republicans surely need to work on. But Christians also need to be aware of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern liberal movement and understand where the Democratic Party--Barack Obama included, emphatically--wants to take us.

Darn.

Well, Western Michigan (!) beat us in hockey last night, 2-1, at Yost. I thought that was bad.

But nothing can compare to sitting through a game in which Michigan football solidifies its most losing season ever--8 losses, never happened before here in A-squared--in (by my estimation) negative-45 degree weather. At least it happened against a team that, even when they're likely to have an 8-win season, brings approximately ten fans--that includes the marching band--to its games. It'd be a lot worse if it happened against somehow-ubiquitous drunken, meatheaded fans like Wisconsin's. The Northwestern fans always look grateful to win, even if it's against the fourth-best team in a given state.

Anyway, this brings us to our offical Hope for the Future section that I just made up.

1) Eerily similar to Rodriguez's first season at West Virginia, plus a much better incoming recruiting class.

2) Two potentially big-time dual-threat QB recruits coming in. Not sure how this will shape up--Forcier is a bigtime passer with apparently good speed, while Shavodrick is bigger and could be a better runner--but we will have Decent Options again.

3) The O-line is playing much better, and everyone comes back. Plus, the many freshmen that didn't see time this year will have a year under their belts, eliminating much chance of having true frosh on the 2-deep.

4) Our only true slot receiver is Odoms this year, but next year we'll have true freshman Jeremy Gallon and we'll have Terrence Robinson back, a 4.4 forty runner who was lost for the season with (I think) a knee injury.

The defense could be an issue, but I have confidence that Shafer will improve our defense even granted the personnel losses we'll have.

Wait...Who Is It That Hates, Again?

Because I'm getting confused.

(H/t to Michelle Malkin, and from there Diana West.)

I mean, I know the Right is just totally hateful, racist, bigoted, all that stuff. But then things like this happen in California. Or this, at Augsburg College. Also, things like this, in Philly, and this, in Illinois. And you start to wonder just who it is that takes abstract beliefs and enforces them on people. You start to wonder just who it is that beats opposition into the ground. You start to wonder about a lot of things, if you have any intellectual honesty whatsoever.

It's a good thing our president-elect is such a unifier...

Live Dangerously Advocates Living Dangerously

And he's so, so right:

This should be viewed as a war. As in any war troops on the ground are vital. I would of thought that the Surge proved that to us. The internet is there as a tool to help facilitate the gathering of volunteers. A means to get them on board in the first place. Secondly to show them how to meet locally with others, and thirdly how to make a difference in their community. We all need to cultivate that “fire in the belly” that is mandatory to any type of change from the status quo. That “fire in the belly” in an off election year comes best and most convincingly from our belief in our core beliefs as conservatives, that has already bubbled up and we need it to be proudly proclaimed at the top and I might add believed in at the top.

Blogging is great, but we need to match what what we say in what we do. Like our friend Live Dangerously, we've got to be involved in the local party, and from there go out and engage the community. Find out where and when your local GOP meets, meet the candidates, and take the initiative with innovative ways to reach voters we haven't been reaching!

Perhaps we bloggers, who represent a broad cross-section of conservatism in a state where conservatism has no business losing elections, need a forum of some kind to present and discuss new practical ideas for spreading a common-sense conservative message...

Temptation

Conservatives...we're upset. Well, a lot of us are. Barack Obama won. We didn't like John McCain too much, either. The only candidate we really felt any sympathy with got trashed by a mainstream media and an elite culture that, honestly, hates people like her. That was wrong.

But what place should Sarah Palin have in our future?

She's been a fantastic governor. Don't tell me she's incompetent or stupid. She took on one of the nation's most entrenched good-old-boys networks in the country and won. She's charming, good-natured, and has courage and firmness of conviction. Yes, I like her. But I don't get the feeling that she had any thoughts about national politics at all until her phone rang and John McCain was on the other end. Maybe someday she'll be more marketable--yes, we need to take that into consideration--but for right now, what we need is to change the party's brand.

(This is the cue for all the good Ottowa County conservative stalwarts to denounce me as a RINO.)

I read two columns about the future of the GOP, both of which highlighted Sarah Palin: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. for the American Spectator, "Vitality in the Wilderness," and Byron York for NRO, "Palin, the Governors, and the New Power in the Republican Party." First, Tyrrell:

What provoked Brooks's fandango with the Traditionalists and the Reformers was a meeting the former group held in the Virginia hills outside Washington to prepare for the years ahead. As Brooks reports, I was present; his term Traditionalist, however, is misleading. There was more variety within the group than you would find among liberals planning a revival in 2004. There were libertarians, evangelicals, tax cutters, hawkish foreign policy advocates, and others. It was indeed the kind of turnout that could be termed "Reaganite," and there are other meetings coming up. For years the conservative movement has had more variety than the liberal movement, which might explain why only 22% of the American people call themselves liberal while 34% call themselves conservatives. There is vitality on the right, and there will be vitality in the wilderness, though the last time we were out here we only stayed two years. Liberal overreach and incompetence saw to that.

(I'm listening to a week-old Hugh Hewitt show on iTunes right now, by the way, and he's talking to Mark Steyn about how Palin's drawing big crowds and that the movement is still there. Great; we can galvanize the 44% of conservatives so that we can have 44% of people be disappointed every election day.) Look, we couldn't get our message across to Americans, by a 52-47 or so margin. We lost Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia. If the national GOP can't get this, the Michigan GOP at least has to: conservatism can speak to many people to whom we've never, ever reached out. Libertarians, evangelicals, tax cutters, military hawks...how long will we preach to the choir before we realize we need to be preaching on the streets?

Sarah Palin is not the voice of a rejuvenated conservative message; I'm afraid she'll be, for many, a would-be avenging conservative angel. She is the personification of fightin' words for a party whose guns have been out of bullets for a while.

York:

Palin’s re-emergence here left a lot of Republicans wondering whether she would be part of a reformed GOP leadership. Barbour said she “helped the ticket,” but yesterday, during a session with the press, Pawlenty and a group of other leaders seemed hesitant to endorse her candidacy. When a reporter asked whether they would have been comfortable with Palin as president, there was a long silence. “I think Gov. Palin is an extremely talented person, and she’s going to be one of the key voices of the party, for Republicans, for a long time to come,” Pawlenty answered. “All I can say is that John McCain made very clear that one of his key criteria for selecting a VP running mate was that that person was ready to be president on day one. So in his judgment, she met that criteria, and he felt strongly about that, and so we’ll have to defer to his judgment and that process.”

It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, and none of the others at the table — Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, former eBay CEO and top McCain aide Meg Whitman, and former OMB chief Rob Portman — said specifically that they would have been comfortable with Palin as president.

This is more reassuring. Sanity must reign among the governors and other high-ranking folks if this is going to be a time-out instead of an exile. We need to be looking for the people who can change the image of Republicans as big business shills and cold ideologues. People like Bobby Jindal ought to figure heavily in this.

Conservatives want revenge. We need to calm down, consult our values, pull out the moral compass, and survey the terrain. Then we can move forward, intelligently.

Since I'll Be Doing Research All Day Tomorrow...

...here's some more from Akindele Akinyemi, Urban Conservative:

Certainly, we have seen changes in our schools during the last 20 years. Teacher salaries have been raised, student-teacher ratios have been reduced, annual per-pupil spending has increased by about 40 percent and total annual expenditures have grown by nearly 60 percent in constant dollars, from about $180 billion to $280 billion.

Note, however, that those changes were supported by the teacher unions. The unions welcome reforms that lead to higher salaries and smaller classes for teachers and more dues-revenue for the unions. At the same time, the teacher unions oppose reforms that would empower parents or allow private schools to compete on a level playing field for students...

...These are some of the more humanitarian issues the Republican Party could be discussing. Especially independent conservatives and moderates who feel that education should be reformed from the ground up.

The Republican Party can continue to ignore Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities on issues that matter the most. Gone are the days of coming into the inner city around election time. The next great war on education will take place in the inner cities of Michigan starting now. You can no longer sit and wait to see what is going to happen. Parents want more educational options in the inner city. This includes charter schools and vouchers for private schools. This is a discussion we can no longer ignore.

As a (hopeful) future high school teacher of Latin...VERY YES. Education is not just the perfect issue for Republicans who have all the common sense and none of the establishment advantages
in this debate--it's also an area of vital interest in every community in this state, urban, suburban, and rural. If we as conservatives want to reach people where they are again, then we need to find our voice on issues like this.

I know a lot of my readers will agree. (Both of them.) And if you do, you need to be going into your local Republican meetings, talking to the people there, and spreading this idea. You need to volunteer to help spread it to the community, and let people know that the Republicans have the policy ideas that speak to their lives and their values.

We as a party cannot ignore everything east of Livingston County! The Democratic Party has maintained a stranglehold over an area that they've simultaneously destroyed both economically and morally. We have the message, we can have our voice...but can we have the humility and the compassion to reach out to people who are different from us?

Akindele on the New Direction

This is from last Friday, but reflects my own thoughts quite well. Akindele Akinyemi, Urban Conservative:

I have been warning the Republican Party about the role of minorities in the party. Now all of a sudden all across the nation is how do we get more Blacks into the party. I mean Jesus, we just now figuring this out? Maybe if you put some money behind outreach programs we can go further.

For example, the constant excuses I hear coming out the 14^th District alone in Wayne County is asinine. On one end you want to defeat Congressman John Conyers but will not do any homework to plan, strategize and run the most effective candidate. The excuse is everyone in Detroit will vote for Conyers. You would be surprised of how many people want Conyers out because of his age. Also, there are TONS of young people in Detroit who voted for Obama simply because McCain did not even show up in the inner city. In fact, he did not show up in ANY inner city in Michigan and I can see why. What urban message was he going to convey?

This is so blindingly obvious that only an entire political party could get it wrong. Food for thought. Anyway, it's all interesting...so read it! But the part that concerns us immediately is this:

President-elect Barack Obama has engaged in a brand new electorate called young people. These young people are looking to Obama’s plan for change and have dismissed the core values that has helped us become a nation. What’s worse is that no one in the Republican Party had a TRUE answer for Obama.

If you want young people to join the GOP then you need a reason to bring them to the party.

When we look at how our party is ran is it ran like a natural grassroots operations or is it ran like a telemarketing campaign? We spend more time on the phone than going out in public. We have to get up off our asses and actually walk into the very community where liberal ideology has taken root for decades. No, you cannot send me in, as a Black Republican, to spin the issues either. I simply will not do it so you can sit in the office and work. The real work is OUTSIDE the doors.

There's simply no way conservatives and Republicans can move forward without any excitement from "young people." (Maybe it's because we call them "young people." Listen to me! And I'm 23!) There's an idea that young people are just a lot more liberal, but there are a lot of basically conservative ideas coming from the kids. We youths love localism--anathema to the kind of statism we've been fighting for years. We're concerned about education, health care, and the environment--areas that conservatives have needlessly retreated from for decades. The truth is that the new and innovative solutions are found on the Right, but no politician will give them a voice. We need politicians to find that voice for the general welfare of our citizens, and humanity in general, in opposition to the ideologically-driven special interests of the education establishment and unions.

But the real work isn't in front of the computer screen, or at some Republican Party event. Like Akindele says, it's OUTSIDE! We need to engage the people whose values we know we share, but with whom we've been unable to connect. Maybe that's because the strongest connections are personal, not ideological...and of all people, conservatives should never forget that.

Moving Beyond the Three Legs of the Stool

(I reserved this critique for a new post instead of attaching it to the last one, for the sake of posting brevity. Anyway, read on.)

For some time now, we've talked about the three legs of conservatism: social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, militarist/nationalist/hawkish (take your pick) conservatives. Most people have wanted to talk about how to unite the three, but the truth is that the Bush presidency may have splintered that coalition for good. Hawkish conservatives had to feel happy at first, but then perhaps felt slighted because of the Bush administration's severe mishandling of the beginning of the occupation of Iraq and endless difficulties in Afghanistan. Bush originally took office as the president of social conservatives, but never delivered much on that promise, and in fact social cons have come to realize that the War on Terror presents its own sticky moral dilemmas. Fiscal conservatives loved the tax cuts, but those cold-blooded profiteers never realized that the raised temperatures of lower taxes were never offset by the chilling effect of federal spending, and now they're too lethargic to jump out of the pan: bailouts, here we come.

It's time to get over these things. We need to be honest with ourselves. Any of these three alone is inadequate. Social conservatives are right that we need strong families, strong communities of faith, and strong local communities in order to have a strong nation. Fiscal conservatives are right that economic liberties are inseparable from the other ones, and also that the free market has no rival as a wealth-creating force. And who can argue that our country needs its leaders to be committed to its defense? Conservatism isn't about stopping abortions, or getting rid of welfare, or killing terrorists. It's about people, about human dignity. And if there's one thing that opposes itself to human dignity, it's ideology, and especially ideological snobbery. It's time to make the Republican Party, to make conservatism, about people again.

What does this mean? It means recognizing that ending welfare programs, although admirable in principle, is not attainable or even desirable in the short term. The support mechanisms--local communities, families, etc.--are no longer what they were before the introduction of the dole. Fortunately, welfare programs can be retooled to promote these things and to introduce some degree of obligation, much like welfare reform in 1996. In other words, we can simultaneously reduce social spending and make it help regular people more.

It means recognizing that protecting natural treasures is very important to conservatism. Although we need not buy into the full-blown global climate change frenzy, we must also recognize that natural beauty and clean air and water are important to humankind. Yes, the environmental movement is full of many crazy people who are genuine and violent radicals, but that doesn't mean we need to disagree with every tiniest thing they believe.

We have to recognize the importance of education in people's lives. The Democrats have controlled this debate for no reason at all. Republicans have been lax in promoting the good ideas they've produced and ceded this important territory. We need greater accountability in public schools, more entrepreneurial practices, merit pay, modification of tenure. Private school vouchers alone could help thousands of children stuck in particularly terrible public schools. Too many Republicans see education as a smallball issue, and anyone who has kids should know better.

We have to understand why it is that African Americans and Hispanics reliably vote Democratic. Affirmative action may be an affront to our principles of equal justice before the law, but there are bigger fish to fry. We conservatives ought to be ashamed that we have not produced or advertised any great plans for restoring inner city and other poor and disadvantaged communities. If conservatism cannot be made to work for them, can it really be a legitimate governing philosophy?

We have to understand this about health care, national defense, and so on. It's all about people, not your ideology. It's all about communities, not about purity. And until we come back to that, people won't be all about us.

Jindal, Brooks, and the New Direction

Choose your metaphor. I like "picking up the pieces" best. Whatever it is, the Republican Party needs to do it, and fast.

And note that I say "Republican Party." Not "conservatives," or "libertarians," "traditionalists," or whatever the group is calling itself at the moment. It would be difficult to count the number of times friends have told me that they're "conservatives, not Republicans." Well, guess what? A week ago, we got a new House, a third of a new Senate, and a new president, and all of them either had "R" or "D" next to their name. Refusing to kowtow to a political party may help you feel ideologically pure, but it won't help the country solve the problems that you believe conservatism can fix.

Anyway, onto the infighting stuff. David Brooks, in the New York Times:

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most prominent voices in the Traditionalist camp, but there is also the alliance of Old Guard institutions. For example, a group of Traditionalists met in Virginia last weekend to plot strategy, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. According to reports, the attendees were pleased that the election wiped out some of the party’s remaining moderates. “There’s a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election,” the writer R. Emmett Tyrrell told a reporter.

The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.

This was inevitable. Actually, though, this isn't new. The Republican presidential primaries revealed a party without trusted leaders and without strong principles. The candidates seemed designed to stoke the flames of conservative civil war that had been simmering for a number of years. Huckabee, the Southern evangelical who antagonized the other candidates. Romney, the (hypothetically) fiscal conservative with the audacity also to be a Mormon and the black mark of having been governor of the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Thompson, the throwback with no energy for the campaign trail. Ron Paul, the obligatory radical. Giuliani, the fiscal conservative with the audacity also to have a New York accent (not a winner among flyover-type cons). Ultimately we stuck with Mack, who'd at least come in second once in a primary and had something to offer every faction. Just, not enough to make them come out and vote on Election Day. (Honestly, conservatism might be experiencing even more ennui if McCain had won.)

But honestly, do we have to have these two sides fighting, as Brooks describes? Let's ask Bobby: (Via Hot Air.)





And this man said exactly what I've been thinking. As is typically the case in these sorts of battles, both sides are right. Both sides have been right since the GOP presidential primaries, too. No, our principles as conservatives have not changed. Yes, we live in a significantly different world now than we did back in the Seventies. And yes, this means that our policy ideas have to change, even as our principles remain the same. But how?

Well, it won't be easy. I regret to say that I've had a part in this, but conservatives have been casting each other out for years over, often, the littlest things. We may not like it, but if we want to govern a democratic nation, we must convince the majority of people not only that our principles, but our policies as well, have vital importance for their lives. If we can't find common ground even among the Republican Party, how can we find common ground with a simple majority of the American people? We're going to have to get past the silly factions that have characterized the conservative coalition of late.

Living On The Edge...

...of my pledge. To post once a day. (On weekdays, I suppose.) Still keeping up, barely.

Updates: My dad, who raised me in the ways of conservatism and Michigan football, has begun his blog: Libertarian Tim. (Note: Not his real name. His real name is just "Tim.") Welcome to the blogosphere!

I Was Wrong

...badly, too. I CAN do lots of work without posting on this blog. Lots and lots of work. So...the next-to-last post may have been an alarm of the false variety. Hmm....but in the interest of noting a historical event...

Finally! Now let's go out there and not be quite as sad, until New Year's Day, when we can drown our sorrows with entire bowls of Chex Mix.

Hope And Change On The Right

Yup, Obama won, on a platform of unity. And yup, his supporters are jumping around, graciously taunting conservatives instead of burning their houses down like they deserve. This is going to be a really interesting four years.

And a really great four years, honestly. There's hardly anything more frustrating than watching a political party once full of bright-eyed idealists with the will and the mandate for a common-sense, limited-government agenda descend into a club of the arrogantly powerful concerned only with how to gain and retain power. Conservatives need to take note: exit polls showed Republicans massively disfavored against Democrats, and conservatism widely favored over liberalism. Democrats won a great number of new seats and reclaimed the White House, but their presidential candidate ran on tax cuts, family values, and a mildly restrained hawkishness. Conservative ballot proposals, including three to ban gay marriage (including in California!), won victories at the polls. This is the same center-right nation it was four and eight years ago.

And now that the House and Senate caucuses are smaller and more conservative, we have an opportunity. We may not like Obama, but we can't get bogged down in a conservative version of Bush Derangement Syndrome. We may not think he's serious about unity and working together with conservatives--but we need to realize that Americans don't want government to be a sport. Remember that, when you next feel the sting of a leftist's taunt about this election...he lost or gained just as much as you did. It's time for conservatives to remember that this isn't a popularity contest--it's about the general welfare of Americans, and we believe that a pragmatic and principled conservatism represents that. We need to get off each other's case, get off Democrats' case, and make one to the American people.

So, where do we go from here? We calm down. We fight primary battles, we recruit good House and Senate candidates. We get involved. We develop policy ideas that promote families and communities, promote the economy, and promote our strategic position in the world. We work with the opposition on issues where we find agreement, and fight them where our principles demand that we stand firm. We apply the timeless values conservatism represents to the issues facing our nation today. We present them to America, and convince her that we're the best shot in 2010 and 2012. In other words, nothing we shouldn't have been doing already.

For the Right, it's time for some hope. And from the last few years, that would be a big change.

The Blog Is Go...Again...

So, I figured I'd pretty much just post every once in a while once I began grad school, but then certain events transpired. 1) I became lazy. 2) Elections/debacles. 3) I realized that if I reserve all my time for school work and commit to little else, I'll commit most of my time to nonsense (read: funny YouTube videos and audio clips from radio sports shows). So I'm going to try to make sure I'm posting here at LEAST once a day. With that, some good stuff:

A new blogger! And one I've personally convinced to start blogging, so you should trust him. Or at least give him a chance, if it turns out you actually hate this blog. He gives me some pretty ridiculously undeserved praise--always a plus--and, more importantly, he exhibits in his thought that rare alliance of erudition, intelligence, and inexhaustible decency...in all matters not relating to college sports. Anyway, check The Shadow-Liner out!

Also, the immensely talented Chattering Chippewa (that's my sister) has her literary blog up and running, here. Check it out, check it out, check it out, check it out...

An Essay for Wednesday

In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined "calamity" thus: "A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering." On Tuesday, conservatives suffered a calamity.

I'll confess, I am writing these words two days before the election. If, as I hope, John McCain prevails against all odds, these words will nevertheless be a rallying cry for conservatives; if, as I suspect, Barack Obama carries the day, I hope that this will be both a call to arms and some slight balm for our wounds.

As a Christian, my conservatism is of this kind: I know that good governance will fail in the end. In the last days, humankind will put aside faithfulness to God and hold itself up against Him. But even if I did not believe that, it would nevertheless be true that the conservative's task cannot be more than to preserve what is good against the forces of unthinking Change. We exist to protect the permanent things, to fight those who see human society as a subject of experimentation. We exist to defend civilization, a trust built up and inherited across countless generations, against innovation that takes that civilization for granted. We exist to fight the deification of Reason, of Equality, of Liberty, insofar as they are separated from faith, order, and responsibility, and made into absolute ideals. Against the statism that liberalism sets forth as a tool for human progress, we insist that true human dignity and happiness cannot be codified, cannot be legislated.

As the state expropriates morality, the citizenry becomes increasingly demoralized. Americans grow more juvenile and more trite, less responsible and less relational. Our society grows ever closer to considering pain an absolute evil. Ease, comfort, and satisfaction become our idols, and it is easier to vote for morality than to embody it. In such a climate, a politics of personal responsibility, of social obligations, of family, community, and faith becomes increasingly unpopular. On Tuesday, Americans didn't take a risk; they chose something that was easy.

However, that does not distinguish Election Day 2008 from any other day. The liberal triumph of November the Fourth merely gives this movement an air of officiality. The cancer began long ago, and has metastasized more significantly even than the recent election might indicate. The fatal conceit lies not in the laws or in the public authorities, but in our own hearts.

This is no occasion for gloom. It is an opportunity to remember the truths that, in part, led us to conservatism in the first place. God is in control of all things, and His plan is perfect. There is a purpose in this, though it may be difficult to discern now. Second, no matter how they try, their ideologies can never efface our humanity. Should the very worst happen, we will rebuild again. Finally, although private morality may be discouraged, still our ability to live that morality can never be appropriated by any committee, any council, any authority that the world can contrive.

Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong!

(From William Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty")

In the end, our society is but another city of man. Even should its lights go out after a long daylight, yet we shall keep our vigil. And then we shall rejoice not in the receiving of light, but in the giving.