Free Republic

It ended, as these things always do, with mutual frustration. Linker decided that I, a traditionalist conservative, believe gay marriage should be illegal because ... I believe it should be illegal. And I reached the same conclusion about his support of same-sex marriage. To Linker, my argument looks like faith-based special pleading. Likewise, his rationale struck me as little more than emotivism -- the idea that something is true because it feels right. We talked past each other, not only because neither of us can agree on what constitutes the Good, both public and private, but also because -- indeed,...

It didn't take long last week to determine who's really running the Republican Party. Hours after mildly criticizing Rush Limbaugh, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele apologized. The Limbaugh speech is an example of why popular conservatism today is, as the saying goes, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The first thing we learn from the Master's orotund remarks is that there is nothing conservatives need to rethink in light of dramatically changed circumstances. Limbaugh's ideology makes an idol of nationalism and optimism. He dunned Barack Obama for saying hard times were ahead, denouncing him for his lack of...

Here in a nutshell is why I think Obama will preside over a prolonged world depression with extreme consequences for the developing world: Americans, per my Peter Pan analogy, haven't been saving. They expected their homes and other assets to appreciate instead. Now the Boomers are broke just prior to retirement and are saving as much as they can. If everyone tries to save at once, the economy shuts down and stays shut -- it has nothing to do with the credit crisis. The only way to save without shutting the economy down is to export (as the Chinese have...

If you gave money to the successful Proposition 8 campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage in California, you'd better watch out. Anonymous gay-marriage activists have mashed up public data with Google mapping technology to create Eightmaps.com, an online map to your home. And it's perfectly legal. Also Online Alarmed Prop 8 backers recently filed a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction against a state law forcing citizens who give $100 or more to campaigns to disclose their names and addresses. We had all better hope they prevail. "I don't get the fear," gay-marriage campaigner Andrew Sullivan disingenuously wrote on his popular blog....

Sam Huntington Was Plainly Correct If 2008 taught us anything, it was the danger of listening to people who tell us what we want to hear. Anybody with a lick of sense should have seen that we were living inside a bubble of Panglossian optimism that had little basis in observable fact. But as George Orwell quipped, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." Samuel P. Huntington, the eminent Harvard political scientist who died on Christmas Eve, was used to being derided for his ability to see what was in front of our collective...

November 10, 2008 Here Comes the Conservative Civil War By Rod Dreher And so, with a resounding, bone-rattling crash, the conservative era ends. Now the scattered and demoralized armies of the right will turn on each other with such ferocity it will make the brutal opening scene of Gladiator look like a slap fight at a slumber party. It's about to get mercenary in the woodshed. Who lost conservatism? The first instinct among shell-shocked and infuriated partisans will be to blame anybody but their own faction for this historical repudiation. Look to the talk-radio mob to set upon conservative elites...

How do we know this? Has her gynecologist given an interview to the National Enquirer? Nope. That's the considered opinion of Wendy Doniger, a University of Chicago divinity school professor, who has apparently been driven out of her mind by Sarah Palin. Here's what she wrote on the WaPo's "On Faith" blog: Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts...

Does the Angry Left really want to launch a culture war over Sarah Palin? Fine. Lock and load. That's the feeling of many conservatives who until last week were lukewarm at best about the prospect of a John McCain presidency. The unhinged malice of the cultural left's assault on the Alaska governor's personal life has focused their minds and stirred their hearts. Ms. Palin's astonishingly poised and confident performance in her convention speech proves that this Iron Lady is not about to quail before the judgment of her would-be betters. Neither will conservatives. If they were indifferent or hostile to...

Today, the Los Angeles Times ordered its bloggers not to talk about the story. Here, via Kausfiles, is the memo from an editor there: Hey bloggers, There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified. If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask Keep rockin,...

Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who,...

Now that Benedict has come and gone we are in the thick of media analysis of the meaning of it all. Many folk (Rod Dreher is a notable example) were (as I expected) disappointed because the pope didn't "do something" about bishops who have, to say the least, not particularly distinguished themselves in the Scandal. Dreher wanted a "read them the riot act" moment. Others scattered around the secular and mainstream media talked about Benedict "firing" them and so forth. The pope, as you might expect, addressed the bishops and (as you also might expect given his high degree of...

Could it be that cultural and religious conservatives are fed up with being treated like useful idiots by the Republican establishment? Karl Rove helped re-elect Mr. Bush in 2004 by pushing statewide ballot initiatives to protect traditional marriage. But when the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution came up before the Senate, the GOP backed away from it, and President Bush gave it only desultory support. The amendment died with barely a fight from the Beltway right. Then there was the secret memo sent by Michael Scanlon, associate of crooked GOP fixer Jack Abramoff, that mocked Christian conservatives as...

Why does the GOP Establishment fear Huck? Juan Cole's got a bad case of left-wing Huckenfreude: I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called “anti-Christian” or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics. Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about- are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage...

Mormons aren't Christians ... ... and other thoughts on religion and politics sure to get your blood boiling Herewith, my views on religion and the politics of the present moment, with something to offend just about everyone: 1. Mormons aren't Christians. I don't mean that as a criticism, only as a descriptive phrase. When Mormons claim Jesus Christ as their savior, there's no reason to doubt their sincerity and good will, or even to deny that they are in some way followers of Christ. Yet Mormonism rejects foundational doctrines of traditional Christian orthodoxy, such that it is impossible to reconcile...

Roman Sacristan tells me that Rod Dreher, a right-wing writer (Dallas Morning News, National Review) who used to be Catholic (convert) has jumped ship and joined an Orthodox church (personal take: for me it'd be absurd to join, say, the Russian Orthodox church without being Russian). On Beliefnet, Mr. Dreher explains himself in quite a pitiful manner, citing the sex scandals and dissent in the Church - only to offer up dissent himself. Back in 2001, when I first started writing about the child sex-abuse scandal in the Church, Father Tom Doyle, the heroic priest who ruined his own...

Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to read Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons. This is a book that has been stirring up conservative circles since its release this past winter. Dreher is a popular Generation-X conservative writer and a convert to Eastern Catholicism. He has worked for a number of publications, including the National Review, the New York Post, and the Washington Times. He is now a full-time writer and editor with the Dallas Morning News. A Manifesto for the Family In Crunchy Cons, Dreher sets out to chronicle how “Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip...

Book review: CRUNCHY CONS How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or at Least the Republican Party). By Rod Dreher. 259 pp. Crown Forum. $24. THE upscale natural foods grocery chain Whole Foods now stocks a brand of cereal called Ezekiel 4:9. It could pass for any other gravelly, whole-grain, flour-free concoction on the shelves, but Ezekiel's box credits its inspiration to "the Holy Scriptures." If this sounds like your kind of breakfast, you may be a crunchy con —...

From the reviews of Crunchy Cons Sometimes, it is said, one must be cruel in order to be kind. "Architecture, trees, foodstuff...[Let's] discuss the case for regulating sprawl or the deep pleasures of Humboldt Fog cheese". He calls himself these days a "crunchy Republican" and has written a book to that effect in the hopes that the Wizard can give such a creature a brain and maybe help recapture some who have rightly become morally very uneasy with GOP schizoid "values". So why not transvalue them altogether, he asked himself? Put them in jeans and a log cabin and take...

DALLAS, Texas- Some people love organic food, are environmentalists, and do not think much of unbridled capitalism, yet they still insist they are hard-core conservatives. Can this be true? Now there is a new subset of conservatives known as “crunchy cons.” Crunchy cons is a term coined by journalist Rod Dreher, who realized after he and his wife got hooked on the superior taste of organic foods, that he himself might be a crunchy con -- or crunchy conservative. Dreher said, "My wife had cooked these amazing vegetables. They were delicious. I said, 'Where did you get these?' She goes,...

The New CountercultureMeet Rod Dreher, a conservative who is critical of capitalismBY GEORGE H. NASHRod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, "the Democrats act like the Party of Lust." But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism,...