A world without God to give people some certitude that all their suffering is not meaningless is a nightmare. A world without religion means a world without any systematic way of ennobling people. A world without countries is a world without the United States of America; a world governed by the ruthless tyrannies and by the morally imbecilic United Nations, where mass murderers sit on its “human rights” councils. A world without heaven or hell is a world without any ultimate justice, where torturers and their victims have identical fates — oblivion. A world without possessions is a world in which some enormous state possesses everything and the individual is reduced to the status of a serf.

Liberals frequently criticize conservatives for fearing change. That is not correct. We fear transforming that which is already good. The moral record of humanity does not fill us with optimism about “fundamentally transforming” something as rare as America. Evil is normal. America is not.

Well Put, Dennis.

via Why the Right Fears Transforming America – Article – National Review Online.

“It’s sort of inconceivable… right… you could be sitting on your macbook pro… watching the world cup soccer… and writing an essay for one of our favorite publications… in defense of Sarah Palin… right… I mean… you can’t do all those things on a mac… it’s like everything kind of rejects itself…”

- (17th min) contributor on ricochet podcast.

When you have Tucker Carlson, Jonah Goldberg and Andrew Klavan on the same podcast… it’s kinda hard NOT to listen.

I love how he starts… he puts forth his credentials as someone capable of critiquing the Conservative movement because he “flirted” with being a Republican when he was 8 years old…

He then makes the most absurd claim imaginable… that REPUBLICANS were anti civil rights (when in fact it was Lincon, a Republican, who freed the slaves… and it was Democrats who voted in far greater percentages against the Civil Rights bill than Republicans ever did. [Wikipedia people]).

He then goes on to label terrorists in Guantanamo as “political prisoners”… (political prisoners even Obama can’t seem to be able to give a trial … or release for that matter)…

He then goes on to quote the BIBLE… interpreting calls for personal generosity as some dictate for state-based welfare redistribution (while ignoring the fact Conservatives are *empirically* far more generous than liberals in terms of charitable giving)… interpreting freedom from spiritual bondage with freedom for terrorist detainees… and forgiveness of sins with (presumably) mortgage forgiveness.

Wow… talk about being out-of-touch.

Click here

also read his case for infant baptism… rather interesting stuff.

Take something as small as Obama’s need for a word-for-word script, just to answer questions at press conferences. His teleprompter dependency is simply unprecedented. Any Republican president would be laughed out of the room with that kind of hand-holding from Axelrod, or Bill Ayers, or Michelle, or whoever is dictating the words behind the scenes. No wonder Obama is considered eloquent. Like a talking head on TV he constantly needs his writers to feed him the words, so he can pay total attention to his acting style. But even his acting is degenerating in front of our eyes: Obama is turning Obombastama. You can tell from the tone of hysteria creeping into his operatic baritone. Maybe they need to switch that reverb circuit back on? That should impress all the lickspittles of the White House press.

via American Thinker: Obama’s essence.

Readers of my book (and the Corner) know that I think the cult of pragmatism is really a Trojan Horse for the preferred ideological positions of people who don’t want to have ideological arguments. It often requires an undemocratic form of argumentation in which differing points of view are dismissed as illegitimate.

And while we are on the topic of Jonah Goldberg, you should really read his latest article:

Imagine a child falls down a well. Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house. Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste? Or would you think I’m a jerk, for want of a harsher word not printable in this space?

I ask because I’m trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration….

“Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,”…

If the president had admitted that he was using a national calamity for narrow partisan or ideological advantage, it would have been outrageous. Indeed, every time Karl Rove or some other administration official said anything that could be even remotely interpreted as using the war or 9/11 for partisan or ideological gain, the editorial pages and Democratic news-release factories went into overdrive with righteous indignation.

Well, now we have the president, along with his chief aides, admitting — boasting! — that they want to exploit a national emergency to further their preexisting agenda, and there’s no scandal. No one even calls it a gaffe. No, they call it leadership.

It’s not leadership. It’s fear mongering.

• The Myth of the ‘Widening Gap Between Rich and Poor’
• Bush Hatred and Obama Euphoria are Two Sides of the Same Coin
• Five Truths about the Banking Crisis
• How Government Prolonged the Depression

Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting evinced only the mildest of disappointment…

I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight — switching sides in World War II, for example — whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction..

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia — only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed..

Charles Krauthammer – The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama – washingtonpost.com

Pretty hard-hitting if I say so myself. Krauthammer is right in this: the media COULDN’T CARE LESS about Obama’s record… they excuse it, they try to justify it, they cover for him… it’s just who these people ar.

Anyway, he seems like a nice guy… despite my pestering.  Might as well give his blog a visit.  He’s even got his own podcast!