Forget The Nutroots Fantasy - Road to the Middle Class

THREE MONTHS before an election that could be the toughest for Republicans since the Year of the Woman in 1992, too many conservatives are writing the Democrats off as “nutroots” or imagining that they are self-destructing.

Writes Dean Barnett on the Hugh Hewitt blog,

A rough conventional wisdom seems to be forming that if Ned Lamont wins tomorrow night, it will be disastrous for the Democratic Party.

He takes his cue from Lanny Davis who mourns that the supporters of Ned Lamont, the peace canididate running for the United States Senate seat of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, are behaving like right-wing McCarthyites. And from Martin Peretz who mourns about the return of “peace” candidates of the kind that took the Democrats down to defeat in 1968 and 1972.

Then there is David Limbaugh who argues that even if Republicans are divided, the left is in worse shape.

This is dangerous stuff. The facts on the ground are that, to the average voter, it looks like things are going to hell in a handbasket. People are paying $3.00 per gallon for gasoline, and it happened on President Bush’s watch. The cheap ARM mortgages that people filled up on three years ago are exploding and it is happening on President Bush’s watch. And that is to say nothing about the “mess in Iraq” and the scary war between Hezbollah and Israel.

When the government appears to be losing control of events then it is time to vote for the other guys.

The Democrats are not going to implode, and the average voter is blissfully ignorant of the excesses of the left-wing “nutroots.” The polls show that about sixty percent of Americans think that Bush is doing a bad job, and nearly sixty percent think the economy is in the tank. And now the Prudoe oil field is falling apart.

The fact is that Republicans will be lucky to retain control of Congress this fall. Wishful thinking about Democratic implosion just makes the job harder.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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