Posted on 11/16/2006 8:19:09 AM PST by Mamzelle
Martin wants to point out that if it weren't for the icky evangelicals, we'd still have Allen as Senator in Va.
Dissing Ann is one of the reasons I let my NR subscription lapse, among other reasons. They couldn't take her passion. Just too alive to be endured.
All that junk about "compassionate conservatism"--at the NR they're DISpassionate conservatives. Cold fish. As Enchiladita said today, and really caught my ear when discussing the tepid nomination of Mel Martiez to the RNC, don't they have any passion about anything?
The NR never bothered, in all their years, to lend any serious ear to the evangelicals, or religious right, or Christian Conservatives, or whatever you want to call them. They'd publish the occasional visit-to-the-zoo article about evangelicals, and even let a former convert to Catholicism from conservative Protestantism (Dreher) write a few columns. A southerner, even, imagine that.
The religious right will simply have to accept that its only legitimate goal is for the government to stop helping its enemies (i.e. not implementing or funding liberal social engineering). Any desire for religious-right social engineering (e.g. the Internet gambling ban) must be explicitly disavowed.
(My answer: They need to undo the damage by actively pushing for repeal of nanny-state measures such as the Net gambling ban, the various bits of Net censorship that the courts haven't cleaned up yet, etc).
Methinks what we have here is a lashing out at the messenger.
What in your mind constitutes a "religious nutjob," the influence of which in the GOP is sending you screaming to teh exits? This near atheist is just curious.
I noticed the term years ago because it was so monumentally self-flattering --a class of people set apart by their superior vision and intelligence. After all, those not in the "creative class" would by extension be stupid classless drones.
The trouble with having our "literati" isolated in the NE cities of NY and DC is the obvious one of near-sightedness. When you're a conservative at a cocktail party, you have to endure the sophisticates' ridicule of those ignorant rubes who believe in Jesus Christ. After a while, you get to thinking that the whole world is like that.
Reagan knew who Joe Sixpack was. And he never treated Joe like an idiot.
Joe Sixpack is much smarter than NR thinks he is, and he knows where he's not wanted.
Or, even, having a regular spot on their masthead for someone Not Our Kind, Deah. After thirty-odd years, it wouldn't kill 'em.
At least there's Human Events, Frontpagemag, etc.--but it galls me that erstwhile longtime conservative publications never notice on which side their political bread is buttered on--until they need someone to blame for going hungry. I guess you didn't catch the CATO last week.
Class and cultural snobbery has been around since rocks cooled, and always will. To be honest with you, I don't know anybody, none, zippo, nada, where religion is a central theme in their life. In fact, I know few who bother to go to church/temple at all, and nobody but nobody talks about religion in conversation except myself, and I do it as a hobby and matter of intellectual interest. So I guess there real is a cultural divide when it comes to interpersonal contact.
Certainly John Kerry would be president.
Bill Buckley when he had that guy on at Christmas every year on Firing Line, whose name escapes me, spoke in frustration and near pain that he could not discuss religion in the polite and intellectual circles in which he ran, without folks looking at him like he had just peed on the carpet. The religious gene just ran dry in the privileged upper middle to upper class over time, or so Buckley found.
Forgive me, but bwahahah! If you read the entire thing hearing the supercilious tone of Sabato, then fine. But tone is difficult to detect in writing—especially when one comes to it with preconceived notions as to the writer's intent.
That is not unique to you...I did exactly the same thing when I read it and didn't hear the same tone because I wasn't looking for it.
Which is why using that as a defense is so funny, imo. Listen, if you are intent on seeking out the hidden agenda of "Christian victimization" then more power to you. But it is intellectually unfair to go around accusing others of making Christians a victim in cases where it's tough to actually support the argument, because in the end it gives us less credibility to fight the real battles when they come around.
Interesting, no?
Although personally a near atheist, I am not a religious disdainer myself, and think on balance the Fruited Plain is fortunate to have such an amazingly high degree of religious spirit for a place so economically developed. (It enhances our civic virtu in the Greek sense of the word among other things.) As you know doubt know, on a chart where the Y axis is religious fervor, and the X axis is the degree of economic development, the least squares line is fairly straight (and of course diagonal), but there is one dot out there that is all alone, way alone, sort of like Pluto, and that dot is the United States.
Fair enough—prissy pants it is for me. LOL. Good luck in your quest.
If it weren't for those pesky Christians, Allen wouldn't have been as close as he was.
From your keyboard, to the ears of the prissypant NE bow-tied National Review editor.
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