Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation calls for a debate within the conservative movement: The re-election of President George W. Bush is a victory for conservatives and for America. Senator John Kerry is the most liberal member of the United States Senate. Especially in view of likely Supreme Court vacancies, our country will be…

Get Religion has been doing a good job covering what I can only call the anti-Christian hysteria emanating from the grand poobahs of our high culture. See here, here and here. Many liberals seem convinced that America is on the verge of a takeover by the forces of reaction, by “theocrats” and “religious fascists” whose…

Anthropologist Grant McCracken has some: Democrats must understand several things about Republicans to beat them in 2008. (I am your devoted anthropological servant, without regard to party.) First, Republicans (and the people who vote for them) must be understood to hold a moral and intellectual position. They are not, as some Democrats insist, “asleep,” “ignorant,”…

It’s a possibility says Alan Bock: There is even a possibility, now that the election is over and the need to appear infallible is less apparently pressing, that the administration will assess Iraq more objectively, begin to understand how badly things are going and how difficult it will be to establish a viable democracy in…

From James Mann at Foreign Policy magazine: The Doomsayers suggest that Bush’s second term is likely to produce further military interventions overseas, along the lines of Iraq in 2003. Perhaps Syria may be the next target of U.S. military power, they suggest, or Iran. They believe that the neoconservatives (that is, officials such as Deputy…

From the Onion of course: TIBETAN TEEN GETTING INTO WESTERN PHILOSOPHY LHASA, TIBET-Deng Hsu, 14, said Monday that he is “totally getting into Western philosophy.” “I’ve been reading a lot of Kant, Descartes, and Hegel, and it’s blowing my mind,” Hsu said. “It’s so exotic and exciting, not like all that Buddhist ‘being is desire…

Alleged Catholic Garry Wills says: “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?” I didn’t realize one was obliged to believe in evolution “fervently.” Isn’t it enough just to accept it as the best science going? Surely mere assent will do. The Virgin…

Managed not to lose all my sidebar links this time. The white was getting a little drab I thought.

From Jesse Walker at Reason’s Hit and Run blog: The media’s line is that Bush’s reelection turned on the culture war. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s plausible; conservative Christians turned out in Ohio to vote against gay marriage, and that may have made the difference between a national victory for Bush and…

The pollsters are telling us that a significant number of voters (~22%) cited “moral values” as their preeminent concern, more than any other issue. “Moral values” here means “hot-button” issues like gay marriage and abortion. I’m not going to complain about people voting on these issues; I certainly think they are legitimate matters of public…