Another soon to be octogenarian checks in. Haven’t his generation destroyed conservatism enough? I hope Obama’s shock troops are enforcing euthanasia policies by 2010,and this desiccated fraud, faux “conservative”. The “Burke” this mountebank admires is probably David Burke. Google any combo of “David Burke,plane December, 1987” and you’ll catch my drift. THAT BURKE is closer to Obama than Edmund Burke.

Yeah, that Nixon he never kept the country in a stupid useless war one second longer than necessary. Old Ronnie never put troops in a stupid no-win situation either where they could be slaughtered like pigs on a spit.

Nevermind.

Always good to see Mr. Hart back in print!

Butl, as Burke was a Whig, the precursor to today’s Labour Party, I am not surprised on whit that an honorable and true and tested Burkean disciple such as Mr. Hart would prefer Obama’s secular socialism to McCain’s neo-Trostkyism / proto-Fascism.

Unfortunately, we few remaining old-school Tory’s, who prefer the true conservatism of Bolingbroke in his prime to Burke’s quasi-traditionalism, are left with Chuck Baldwin, who has no realistic chance of even influencing the present race.

Perhaps in the future, Ron Paul and Baldwin could galvanize a truer, conservative renewal with a tent sufficient large to cover the Burkes, Bolingbrokes, and Lew-Rockwell Libertarians and give the Big-Statists a run for their money and ever-growing and invasive power trip.

I myself cannot fathom such a mentality.

It’s a simple concept…

Embryonic stem cells are the same as abortion.

It’s one of those logic things, though I know the fuzzy kind is popular these days.

Good lord, how pathetic.  Roe v Wade is conservative because it allows women’s economic equality; voluntary withdrawal from state confiscation of one’s money is radical; and Obama understands that the Third World isn’t ready for democracy. 

NR may be a shell of its former self, but it suffered no loss when this genius left.

What an idiot! Calling Obama a “Burkean conservative”! This mentality is exactly why the stupid, postwar American ‘conservative’ movement has conserved nothing (I refer not just to the Buckleys and Reagans, those worthless leftish frauds, but to genuinely conservative, but not very virile or pugnacious, intellectuals like Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver, too). People like you, Hart, are precisely what is wrong with what pathetically passes for a ‘Right’ in America today. A bunch of milquetoast defeatists who would rather rush into the arms of an affirmative actionized foreign Muslim who embodies every single aspect of what is wrong with the US today - racial integration, socialism and lifestyle liberalism - than ever actually stand up and FIGHT!

A couple of years ago I read this fraud’s book, THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MIND. It was enjoyable and reasonably informative about Buckley and his mostly worthless crew (there were a few exceptions: can one imagine James Burnham or even Frank Meyer voting for Obama? Please.), but over and over I kept thinking how this author was in no sense a man of the Right, which helped clarify for me why the Right never accomplished much (ie, it’s not just because the ‘historical zeitgeist’ of the 20th century was strongly against us, but also that the self-styled defenders of the West, or of liberty, or the Old Republic, were mainly wimps and weirdoes). I am not surprised that Hart ends up in the Obongo camp.

Anyone voting for Obama should be IMMEDIATELY read out of the Right. The only choice for rightists now is: be principled and vote for Baldwin, which is what everyone not in a swing state (eg, CA or MA are Obama lands, ID or AK McCain states) should do, or hold your noses and vote GOP in order to check the power of the Democratic Congressional majority. This is not an easy decision.

Most readers of this online mag are familiar with the evils of McCain, but, with the exception of war and foreign policy (admittedly a big one), those evils pale in comparison next to the PROMISED evils of Obongo. The only issue is whether it will be better to suffer through the short-term nightmare of Obama’s multicultural socialism in the hopes that, on the one hand, with an objective situation (unprecedented budget deficits, impending deep economic recession, and an unpopular war) as bad as it is, some of Obongo’s aspirations will get tempered, and, on the other hand, with a likely GOP electoral drubbing, desperate (but invigorated) rightists can houseclean and conquer the GOP, and then, in the midst of the Obama Depression, begin clawing back some of the Congressional seats that Bush and the neocons cost us. 

I don’t know the answer. Obongo and a Democrat (possible super-) majority in Congress could hasten the destruction of America by 20-30 years (ie, on its present course, traditional America is doomed anyway, but the final collapse is likely 4-5 decades away). Instead of the Death of America happening in the 2050s, as planned, it could occur as soon as the 2020s, if Obongo gets most of his way. But maybe, if Obongo really overreaches, there could be a counter-reaction (as with Clinton in ‘94) sufficient to overcome the disaster of the next four years, and, if the chief beneficiaries of that reaction are economic libertarians and anti-immigration racial nationalists (and there are reasons for thinking this could be the case), and NOT evangelical fanatics and neocon militarists (and there are likewise grounds for believing that the time of these factions, which predominated in the recent Bush administration, is past), then the Obongo Epoch will be viewed as having unintentionally midwifed the coming American Hard Right.

As I say, there are arguments all around. But voting FOR Obongo is not a conservative option esp if living outside of a genuine swing state).

A few other matters requiring correction:

What does the idiot mean by saying “But all the organs of the conservative movement followed Bush over the cliff—as did John McCain”? That is true of neocons and evangelicals, but both libertarian and nationalist “organs” were vociferously opposed to the Iraq invasion. Obviously, Hart’s reading is narrow.

Hart writes: “Social Security has long been considered one of the most successful New Deal programs, working well now for 70 years.” What??!! Is this poor man senile? Seriously. Social Security is a paradigmatic example of social democracy, something to which every man of the Right, of whatever stripe, is opposed. It attenuates the bonds between generations, has boosted the political fortunes of liberals, has played a role in declining white American birthrates, has been a huge transfer of wealth for many Americans, especially the productive ones - and is facing deficits of nightmarish magnitude! Analysts across the ideological spectrum predict not only the impending bankruptcy of SS, but that even trying to stem the red ink could permanently lower American standards of living. SS was a giant Ponzi scheme, whose implosion is right around the corner. “Working well”? I’ve never read such stupidity.

Finally, look at these two paragraphs:

“On my Dartmouth campus, half the undergraduates are women. They do not want to have their plans derailed by an unwanted pregnancy. In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the Court ruled that the availability of abortion “enables women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the country.”

Though there is a tragic aspect to abortion, as Obama recognizes, women’s equality means that women have control of their reproductive capability. Men don’t worry about that. The fact is that 83 percent of elective abortions occur during the first trimester, and decline rapidly after that.”

First, since when has female equality (equality of what?), administered by a grasping state, ever been a rightist goal? (Indeed, when has ANY type of equality ever been important to conservatives?)True conservatives believe that men and women are different, either as a product of blind evolution, or the Creator’s intention, and therefore ideally fitted for different tasks. Feminism, being blind to true differences, is, like the similar leftist quest for racial equality, thus at war with human nature, and the type of harmonious (traditional) societies that nature produces. Feminism, like racial utopianism (ie the denial of inherent differences between peoples and races) is a disruptive and anarchistic force in the modern world; Burke would have found both appalling.

And if women don’t want their plans derailed by unwanted pregnancies, then they should avoid sexual intercourse. Or does the liberal Hart also applaud the liberal “sex-without-consequences” line than has done so much to destroy the Western family?

Why does Takimag post this crap? If the editors want to instruct their readers in the nature of and justification for real conservatism, I would be happy to provide such - for a fee.

disappointing.

“And one thing I know is that both Nixon and Reagan would have agreed. Both were prudential and successful conservatives.”

Huh?

“women’s equality means that women have control of their reproductive capability.”

what could possibly be more abstract and hence anti-Burkean than such a notion of “women’s equality”? Women are given the privilege of terminating their pre-born children for the sake of...the abstract goal of women’s equality?

“In fact, embryonic stem cell research is being energetically pursued in the following nations: Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China cooperating with the EU. Privately funded and state funded laboratories are moving ahead vigorously.”

cool. your point?

sorry Prof. Hart, your argument is bizarre.

“He invaded Iraq on the basis of abstract theory, the very thing
Burke warned against. Bush aimed to turn Iraq into a democracy”
Oh please, this is kindergarten level stuff. Bush was merely doing what the neo-cons told him.

Lord P
“as Burke was a Whig, the precursor to today’s Labour Party”
The Whigs were the precursors of the Liberal Party, but by today’s standards, the Whigs were conservatives.

Why does Takimag post this crap?

This has to be a trick-or-treat spoof.

Either that or we can all remember conservatism in our prayers on All Souls Day.

Iowahawk has a much funnier treat-or-treat spoof on Obama and conservatism:

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/as-a-conservative-i-must-say-i-do-quite-like-the-cut-of-this-obama-fellows-jib.html

In point of fact, there was a Marxist coup in 2000, when the old hands from Trotsky’s Fourth International took over. If you can find their constitutional authority for the Federal Executive’s acquisition and maintenance of an overseas empire, never mind for things like wire-tapping, then you will be doing very well indeed.

By contrast, Obama could quite reasonably be portrayed as the most conservative candidate for at least sixty years: an economic patriot ("protectionist"), a foreign policy realist ("isolationist"), and electorally in hock to the biggest “Nativists” and some of the biggest moral traditionalists in America, namely the blacks and their churches.

I have just been told, by someone who knows for certain, that the Republican leaders in the House now expect to lose forty seats, while those in the Senate are bracing themselves for a filibuster-proof sixty Democrats, along with President Obama.

A liberal one-party state? Well, no, not necessarily. It depends who the forty more House Democrats, and the sixty Democratic Senators, are. Those likely to win even Democratic primaries in normally deep red states are not likely to be either morally and socially liberal diehard capitalists and warmongers (like the Clintons, although Bush has done everything they ever wanted and then some, whatever he might say or have said), or morally and socially liberal economic populists and foreign policy realists (who are actually quite rare, there as here, and who tend to be not so much populists as just Leftists, there as here).

No, they are most likely to be morally and socially conservative economic populists and foreign policy realists, the sort of people whom a primary system would produce in much of the United Kingdom if we were lucky enough to have such a thing.

Congressmen Altmire, Berry, Boren, Costello, Cuellar, Davis, Donnelly, Ellsworth, Holden, Kildee, Lipinski, Marshall, McIntyre, Melancon, Mollohan, Murtha, Oberstar, Ortiz, Peterson, Rahall, Skelton, Shuler, Stupak, Taylor, Wilson, et al are on course to be joined by figures such as Bobby Bright (AL-02, a Baptist deacon), Parker Griffith (AL-05, a pro-life doctor and endorsed by Alabama’s State Fraternal Order of Police), Doug Heckman (GA-07, a special forces colonel in the Army Reserves and endorsed by General Wesley Clark), Mike Montagano (IN-03), David Boswell (KY-02), Don Cazayoux (LA-06), Joseph Larkin (MI-11), Travis Childers (MS-01), Jim Esch (NE-02), Steve Driehaus (OH-01), Bill O’Neill (OH-14) and Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-03).

Meanwhile, the Senate already includes staunch pro-lifers such as Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. It also includes Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, an economically populist opponent of the neoconservative war agenda, and a cultural conservative who served as Navy Secretary in the Reagan Administration.

If the filibuster-proof sixty mark is reached, then it will be reached in such persons as Ronnie Musgrove (MS, who as State Governor signed the law banning public funding of abortion) and Bob Conley (SC, a traditional Catholic, Ron Paul activist, and opponent of the bailout).

I know why neocons are worried.

Conservatives, on the other hand, should be ecstatic.

, http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com

There is a lot to criticize here. To save time let’s just say that just because Bush and McCain are wrong does not make Obama right.

Burke would not support a socialist who wants to “redistribute the wealth” nor would he abide a black racialist with connections to the likes of Wright, Ayers and Farrakhan.

Fortunately, most people are now realizing that the “conservative movement” was worthless. And I’m not just talking neocons here. Men such as Buckley and Hart conserved nothing and left no legacy.

Embryonic stem cell research is certainly NOT being vigorously pursued by private investors.

Dr. Hart should stick with Milton and Lessing.

If one believes in the sovereignty of the individual, then it becomes absurd even to discuss abortion.

Gentleman,

Please!  Let us show some civility, and not eat our own.

Mr. Hart has dedicated a large part of his life to the broader conservative cause in this country.  And, by any standard, he has acquitted himself nobly and with honor.

Now, some may disagree with his support of Obama and his reasons therefore.  But, that is not excuse for personal and vindictive attacks upon his person and character.

One of the virtues of Movement Conservatism, until recently, has been its openness to a broader variety of opinions, all derived from a fairly common conservative outlook.  For instance, continuing this tradition, AmConMag published a recent editions with a variety of Presidential endorsements ranging from Obama and McCain to Baldwin and Nader.  None of the authors was or will be shunned from AmConMag—nor I trust shall Mr. Hart.

The fact is that 83 percent of elective abortions occur during the first trimester, and decline rapidly after that.

This is to take a utilitarian view towards the deaths of innocents. Does the 83% justify the 17% that occur in the second and third trimesters? Is even one deliberate killing of a viable fetus justified? If so, how, unless you think a child in the womb less than a person deserving of full protection under the law? If that’s the case, what makes him deserving of protection once he emerges from the womb?

Altogether, I am disturbed by your justification of abortion as some “good” to further women’s equality. Many women would argue that legalizing abortion has done irreparable harm to millions of their gender.

John Medaille croaks:

“Bernie mutters a black racialist with connections...to Farrakhan.

Hmmm. Anybody know what a “racialist” is? And the fact that he is black (half-white, actually), is relevant...how?

If this is an example of “conservatism,” no wonder it died. Is anybody actually mourning its passing?”

Here are your answers:

1. A racialist is someone who puts his race ahead of any other interest (country, religion, party ...etc.)

2. The fact that Obama is a black racialist is very relevant as a white racialist would not be allowed to be a Senator or to be elected as President. Read Obama’s autobiography “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” to see where his loyalites lie.

3. I know of nobody mourning the passing of conservatism. But it sounds like the current version of politically correct garbage that passes for conservatism would be right up your alley.

1.) IMHO all ideology is radical, ‘as if’ dreams of whatever stripe are all that is required, in the real world.
They’re required in tandem with hard thinking always, like a boat requires an anchor.

2.) The accurate conservative maxim is: ‘if it is not *necessary to change it is necessary not to change.’ Thus any change of anything has to be gradual, even when necessary, including if of SS.  … Too bad for example Clinton didn’t remember this, even if not a ‘conservative’, when he chucked out Glass-Stegal and abandoned any regulation of the financial markets.  So Hart’s point about not chucking seniors into such a market is at ‘heart’ pardon the pun, conservative.  Non-seniors per se are already lamenting their 401K’s.

3.) All abortion is tragic.  Abandoning Roe v. Wade might be more effectively done [gradually] if no abortions were permitted, except within the first tri-mester, or on account of the life (not just the alleged health) of the mother.  Maybe then the traditional Human expectation of a moral, reliable mother might also be bolstered? 

4.) Which brings us to equality - there’s ‘no such animal’; except since we’re all the pawns of our age, even so-called conservatives have an irrationally sentimental affinity for the delusion of so-called ‘equality’ – though as a practical matter it doesn’t exist either, even under the law. 

5.) Given all of Obama’s promises he’s a radical. Unless he understands how gradual all change must be even when and IF it is *necessary to change.  He does not understand that, any more than Clinton did. 

6.) So regrettably Hart’s conclusion is a delusion, even if speckled with a few accurate conservative instincts.

“Obongo”?  I’m not sure why it took me so long to wade into the sewer of the comments sections here, but I now wish I never had.  What a repugnant, uncivilized, low-brow rabble.  The anti-Obama arguments here are hardly better than the ones made by the O’Reilly/Limbaugh/Toby Keith faction.  Pathetic. 

I do not find Professor Hart’s arguments particularly convincing, though I agree that for a conservative - a conservative, mind you, not a low-class, racist ape like the fellow who used “Obongo” - who plans on casting a vote for one of the two major parties, Obama is the only choice.

On the one hand we have a traditional social-justice liberal, who believes it is the role of gov’t to effect positive social change in America.  On the other hand we have an unstable neoconservative warmonger who believes it is the role of the US military to lord over the entirety of the globe, coercing the peoples of the world with the threat and use of violence.

One will redistribute $100 of your money to social programs.  The other will redistribute $200 to war profiteers.  Both are anathema to a conservative, but which is worse?

I will be voting third party myself, but I’m in a state where the electoral votes are guaranteed to NOT extend the neocon regime.  Otherwise I would vote for Obama also.

John Medaille yodels:

“The evidence Bernie offers is some undisclosed passage in Obama’s book. Certainly nothing he has said or done in this campaign.”

Since the Burkean conservative Medaille has not read Obama’s book, let me pick out a quote for him that was just listed in Raimondo’s article: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.”

And then there is his “race speech,” his defense of the Jena 6 attackers, his support of affirmative action, his 20-year friendship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his attendance at the Million Man March and generally his whole autobiography which John Medaille will never bother to read or understand.

John Medaille whimpers:

“Between Bernie and the “Obongo-boy” (who considers himself to be so much more “cultured” than Hart), I think we can figure out who the “racialists” are.”

Ah, spoken like a true Burkean conservative. Pointing out the clear, obvious and undeniable racism of Barack Obama makes me a racist.

This exchange illustrates why the Occident is dust. Any white man who would vote for a minority (esp a Marxist one, though even a conservative like Clarence Thomas poses symbolic problems) as the leader of our country cannot call himself a conservative. As Jared Taylor has irrefutably demonstrated, EVERY president before Kennedy was, by today’s standards, a white supremacist. That is historical fact.

It is also historical fact that the Founders were, to a man, white supremacists. Do you worthless race-liberals think you are morally or intellectually superior to the Founders? That they were good men, but less “enlightened” than yourselves? To suggest as much is risible.

That ANY white Americans could even consider voting for a minority for President, but esp a Marxist one, is a sigh of foolishness beyond redemption, as well as that our race and civilization are doomed - unless a heroic minority of racial super-patriots can somehow seize power somewhere, and create “Western civilization in one country”. The Bolsheviks conquered Russia violently, the sodomites conquered San Francisco electorally - why can’t we impose our will somewhere? The “conquest option” is the last hope to save the West.

John Medaille spews his best for last:

“I am old enough to remember a time when a mere desire to keep the blacks in their place was enough to qualify you as a “conservative.” This exchange sounds like old times, like deja vu all over again.”

We are living in a time when a mere honest discussion about race and racism is enough to qualify you as a “racist” (but only if you are white) who can be relieved of a job, a reputation and a future.

If some whites choose not to be “kept in thier place” by pointing out the reality of black racism, there will always be buffoons like John Medaille to strengthen and defend the PC grip.

Too bad John wasn’t born in an earlier time. He would have made a great camp guard in 1930s Germany and in Stalinist Russia.

Leon Haller - is that Fade TB?

John:

You cannot be serious! Have you even read the book? Almost every page is dripping with race! Here’s another quote:

“All my life, I had carried a single image of my father, one that I had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned, one that I had later tried to take as my own. The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader—my father had been all those things. …It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I‘d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela. … my father’s voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people’s struggle. Wake up, black man! [p. 220]”

Here is a new book by Steve Sailer that lists numerous instances of Obama’s racism. Perhaps you can open your mind enough to see for yourself: http://www.vdare.com/half-blood_prince/half-blood_prince.pdf

John:

“Quote obviously, the quote refers to the way a boy felt during a difficult time in his life. The fact that he can examine such a time to discover its shortcomings speaks well of the man, and does not indicate a “racialist.”

How is this so obvious? Care to submit any proof (from the book you didn’t even read)?

John moans:

“In fact, I think its pretty clear who the “racialists” are here. Three cheers for Hart for standing up to the racists.”

But Hart didn’t even mention race or “racists” in his piece. So your whole argument comes down to calling me and anyone who disagrees with you a racist. You cited not one shred of evidence to disprove my points or prove yours.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

I would like to ask a request of those here who are in mortal terror of a Barack Obama presidency: please define the nightmare scenario you fear will come to pass due to his being elected.  And I mean above and beyond the standard social-justice liberal/social democratic agenda.  Paint a picture for me as to how his alleged Radical Racialist Black Nationalism will manifest itself.  In what ways would it be distinctly different and more destructive than it would were he a standard white establishment liberal?

PS

That is, of course, not to say that I believe he is any sort of black racist or Black Nationalist or anything of the sort - I don’t.  I believe him to be a standard, run-of-the-mill collectivist liberal democrat.

“How is this so obvious? Care to submit any proof (from the book you didn’t even read)?”

How is it even a question?  He’s speaking about the past, about his personal emotional and psychological evolution.  Please cite ANY contemporary quotes where Obama claims any current “animosity against (his) mother’s white race”.

To SL Toddard:

You are clearly brainwashed beyond redemption. Really, you are a shining example of why the West is doomed. How I wish your ilk had to explain itself to a reincarnated Andrew Jackson (or George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, etc). You would be laughed (or horsewhipped) out of the room.

Suffice it to say, Obongo spent two decades in the close presence of a virulent hater of whites and the nation called America that we alone founded and built. His name is Jeremiah Wright. His profession: Racist. Obongo’s pre-campaign reaction? Stone silence. Enough said.

THis is what I posted on the other Hart Burkean Conservative thread.

“This endorsement is entirely consistent with Hart’s “What is Left? What is Right?” essay in AmCon Mag. Hart’s conservatism is one of process only, not outcome or content. Prudence and slow change must trump abstract ideology. While concerns about ideology are warranted, a useful conservatism must embrace more than process and pace. It has to actually be defending and conserving (imagine that) something. What is Hart’s conservatism conserving? It is really just opposing things.”

Hart is essentially arguing that political moderation is conservative. But of course political moderation is moderate. Not dedicated to conserving anything in particular. Conservatives conserve, or at some point attempt to restore. Imagine that. Hart’s “conservatism” is the Northern conservatism that Dabney decried.

“Suffice it to say, Obongo spent two decades in the close presence of a virulent hater of whites and the nation called America that we alone founded and built.”

We alone, eh?

John Burke wants his good name back.

It is amazing to read column after column, particularly from those on the libertarian side of the aisle, describing Barack as “anti-war.” Didn’t anyone watch the first debate?

Sorry, Edmund, not John—that’s what happens when you spend four hours the night before writing an essay on John Locke.

Mr. Hart,
In all charity I want to demonstrate how dangerouslymuddled your thinking is.  You call Barack Obama a conservative apropos abortion.  This is an inherent contradiction.  To conserve, in its basic definition, is “to keep in a safe or sound state; preserve from loss, decay, waste, or injury; keep unimpaired.” Yet, it is a horrible fact, that through various procedures, an unborn human being is killed and then sucked out of the womb.  Please, for the benefit of us all, how can you call abortion a matter of conservatism or that obama, who supports this heinous crime, is a conservative?  You appeal to Burke to support your idea of conservatism: “But there are philosophical (analytical) conservatives, the most useful being Edmund Burke, whose “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) understood the great dangers in trying to change society through abstract (republican) theory.” This being the case, it is obvious that Burke would condemn Roe v. Wade as “abstract theory”, since the majority based their decision upon a novelty “the right to privacy...found in the penumbra of the Constitution.” This is nothing more than effecting social change by abstract theory.  What is worse, it is obviously meant to serve the type of social change advocated by feminists and other liberals.  Tell us, Mr. Hart, how Roe v. Wade is conservative?  How are the lame excuses you give apropos so-called women’s rights a justsification to suck out a baby’s brain so they can keep their self-fulfilling jobs?  How is that conservataive?  Finally, you made one of most assinine statements I have ever heard come out of the mouth of a man, “Recently, Harvard announced a program that will be part of a multi-billion dollar science center to be established south of the Charles River, and will be able to supply sem [sic] cells to other laboratories. I call that Pro-Life.” Embryonic stem cell research, obviously, requires the death of the unborn human being.  You call it pro-life!!  Experts I know would call that the thinking of an imbecile.  Maybe, you are unaware that there is extensive umbilical cord and bone marrow stem cell research (wherein no unborn are butchered) and successful applications of this research have been made.  Sir, I think your thoughts are insane as are Obama’s, and that is why you and he, and those who support him, are dangerous to this nation of ours.  If we give no protection to our most fundamental right, then all else you, obama, and the liberal crowd spout, is meaningless, and we’ll continue our plummet into hell.

John Medaille, thanks for the compliment, but I was not arguing for McCain, although it may appeared that I did.  I should have mentioned that. By the way, I do agree with your remarks about McCain.  When I get into the polling booth, I will look hard at Chuck Baldwin’s name.

John Medaille:

McCain’s fecklessness on abortion is an argument for voting for a third-party, pro-life candidate, but it does not constitute an argument for voting for Barack Obama, the most pro-abortion candidate ever nominated by either major party, as well as the candidate most hostile to traditional Christian morality.  In my view, there are no serious arguments for voting for Obama.

“In my view, there are no serious arguments for voting for Obama”

Tom P. nails it here! 

What more needs to be said. There are no serious arguments for voting for Obama—there’s only a deadly mixture of “hope” and despair.  How any serious man of the right could honestly cast a vote for this guy is simply intellectually disingenuous...and self-delusional…

Mr. Medaille,

Of course you can use my pointing out McCain’s unreliability on abortion to argue for Obama; I just want to make sure no one concludes that I support Obama, which I certainly do not.

--Tom

Mr. Médaille,

so this is the source of your excitement: you’re an Obamacon?

I never thought a distributist would ever back a socialist, but I’ll have to read all your comments before responding.

Elections shouldn’t be allowed to become too divisive among those who are otherwise very much in agreement. And the current “right wing” (sic) government shouldn’t be used as reason to go even further left than the current government. Such a sentiment is for the masses, not for the leaders.

Folks in here are I suspect closer to distributism than to capitalism, including Buchanan.

I’m in agreement with Brimelow btw, not Zmirak. However, I also view Bush, McCain, and Obama as radical socialists.

If a European writing in wishes to complain that technically they aren’t, then the old dichotomy of socialist and capitalist simply don’t fit. Call them managerialists then, but no one outside this website knows what a managerial state is.

Whatever the name, we shouldn’t mistake Bush and the neocons as conservative anything. The solution to extreme far-left managerialists is a move to the right.

A vote for Obama is like a vote for Bush in 2000. 

That’s the net effect since again with a ‘fresh’ start both the Executive & Legislative branches of government will be of the same party.  Just like they were in 2000.

The system itself has devolved or happenstanced to a place where the last fairly meaningful check & balance is when Executive and the Legislative Branches have to lock horns.

Without that – it’s time to get it on, all the time, and party down, with the money going out the front door as well as the back.

What an awful piece--what is it doing here? Between abortion and war, is there any hope that the body count will go down under an Obama administration, especially one abetted by so-called conservatives like Hart?

“But for Keynes, this became a question of redistributive justice, the least efficient kind; it always involves vast gov’t bureaucracies to tax and spend. It was a useful stopgap to save capitalism from its chronic crises. Can it continue? I don’t know. But it cannot be confounded with Socialism, and the use of terms in this way merely obscures the real debate.” –John Medaille

I suspect the issue for Keynes became redistributive justice first, rather than distributive only, as a practical matter to save capitalism which only was able to happen due to industrialization. In a zero-sum world redistributive first, becomes necessary in highly imbalanced societies where wealth is concerned, since when too few have too much, it is an iron law that as a consequence too many will have too little. Emotionally this law is, so far too difficult for both the few and the masses to accept since their level of maturity encourages them to want to view their stage as it were, as ‘infinite.’ Pigs can fly etc.

Prior to industrialization in England which led the way, there was general well being even if thinly spread across the board, hard work and thrift as it always had, provided necessary life situations for the general mostly rural populace, as well as in cities.

Then came indusrialization and the concentrations of large amounts of capital, previously unheard of sums, in the hands of a few. Conversely attended inevitably by a growing and unacceptable number of what became known in England as ‘dead zones’ around the country which had just been emptied of everything regardless of their former productivity including therefore of livestock and people as well.  Dead zones.  It’s an iron law in a zero-sum world, if too few have too much too many will have almost or actually nothing.  This is why it becomes a moral issue or an issue of justice.

All of this to ‘save’ capitalism.  Why?  Too few had too much to give up?  Capitalism never was and never will be free enterprise.  It’s very own imbalances and monopolies as well as its other flaws almost IMMEDIATELY prevent free enterprise.  Then what once was real is a myth, and only the myth or Façade survives.

Mr. Medaille I would welcome comments on what I’ve posted herein (above).  I’m still learning.  By the way the imbalances where wealth is concerned have never been greater in America, than they are today.  Right?  I’m sincerely asking since I’m not sure per se.

Yes, you’re definitely Obama’s kind of “conservative”.  There aren’t any conservatives at NR and haven’t been in quite awhile.  What makes you think you can pass yourself off as a conservative here?  Please, we’ve had enough Obamamania from “conservatives” lately.

What the hell kind of Burkean are you?

Please!  Let us show some civility, and not eat our own. .....

Hmm...are there any actual conservatives that the conservatives
believe are true conservatives, and if they do exist, then why aren’t
they winning hearts and minds? Could it be?....can it be?....
do you think that maybe?.....their views are so OUT THERE
that no one dares to really get on board??..
Just a question from a flaming liberal who believes left wing
progressive liberals are not nearly progressively liberal enough.

I appear to be the only person in this precinct, Mr. Hart, that admires the piece. Bravo for the courage. I think time will prove you correct on the assertion that Senator Obama’s temperament is, in comparison to McCain’s and Bush’s erraticness, the more conservative.

Once again, the same old pro-abortion, pro-embryonic stem cell research arguments that completely ignore the obvious biological fact that these are human lives being destroyed. To suggest that because they are very small it doesn’t matter what we do to them is the same as suggesting that because someone is Jewish, or black, or female, or gay, it doesn’t matter what we do to them. It’s simply an appeal to prejudice.