Redstate

Posted at 2:30pm on Dec. 31, 2007 Just a drop of water in an endless sea.

By Thomas

I thought about calling this And thanks for all the fish, but that's been done. I confess to being tempted with The Wrath of the Valheru, but only because it's the coolest phrase in English ever. I also thought about The Bad Wolf, but that would be lost on the non-geeky.

So, I'm leaving.

Traditionally, diaries such as these tend to focus on how awful everyone's been to the diarist; how the blogosphere is a great, teeming mass of unfairness that stalks the land like a great, teeming, unfair, massive thing; and they tend to be interesting only from an anthropological perspective. We've been blessed with relatively few of even the truly interesting type -- the great kowalski's numerous successes in defying convention notwithstanding -- so I'm hoping this one will at least do all the budding archaeology majors a service.

One last time, please, read on.

Posted in Death of the McChicken | goodbye cruel world | Miscellanea — Comments (92) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:28pm on Dec. 31, 2007 And the horses you all rode in on, one at a time, then rotate.

By Thomas

You all have no idea how long I've wanted to write this. For the reasons set forth in my next diary, I can, and am; but I've been saving this up for a while. Pardon the spleen.

Dear Senators Thompson and McCain; Governors Romney and Huckabee; and Mayor Giuliani: You all suck.

Read on to see why. Or don't; I figure only two of you are smart enough to care why a conservative, Mass-going Catholic would personally drive the buggy to take you all to Hell.

Posted in 2008 | Death of the McChicken — Comments (47) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 5:51pm on Nov. 20, 2007 High Hopes, Pass the Carrot Cake

By Thomas

Apropos of Alex's note on the Supreme Court's decision to grant cert in the D.C. gun case:

We all realize, I hope, that this won't resolve whether the 2nd Amendment is, gag, incorporated, right? I mean, whether the 2nd Amendment enshrines an individual right or a collective one (so to speak) is still only a Federal question, and is only applicable here because D.C. is (and will remain forever if I have my way) a Federal protectorate.

If the Court decides that it is an individual right, they're going to have to stand Miller on its head, or just flat-out overrule it. I'm not sure this Court goes there.

(As to incorporation: I know, but I'm not convinced this Court is going to expand the incorporation doctrine. Actually, I just hope they won't, even though I love the policy result.)

Posted at 10:32am on Nov. 20, 2007 On primaries

By Thomas

Gotta say, Mike, I don't look at it that way at all. The reason we toss the kitchen sink at them is because we expect the other side of the v to do so come election time. If they can't handle it in the primary ... well, let's just say the Democrats would have been a lot better off talking to a certain retired Admiral and his friends before they settled on Kerry in 2004.

Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Fred, whoever -- if primary heat roasts them, they're dead against The Dark Lady.

Posted at 8:17pm on Nov. 6, 2007 Re: On Waterboarding

By Thomas

Alex, while I can appreciate not wanting to define what torture is, for fear of carving too narrow a swath (or, as you say, demarcating the line of sin so we can tiptoe up to it), I think you're missing a critical point here: Even if everyone accepts that it is wrong to torture for any reason, not everyone believes that waterboarding is torture. You know as well as I do that when you push for a change in the status quo, the burden is upon you to prove every element of your case. Neither you nor Joe has done that with respect to waterboarding.

Following from that, if "gray areas" are off limits too -- one presumes they're not to be defined either -- then all we're left with is asking Pretty please. There, we must part company.

Finally, the world, as a whole, sucks. I have no interest in looking good in its eyes. I care about the eyes of, in order of increasing importance, my countrymen, my family, my faith, and my God. The rest can take a running leap.

Posted at 7:29pm on Nov. 6, 2007 Re: Carter and a Bridge Too Far

By Thomas

Jeff, I obviously agree with at least part of what you wrote, but this is too much:

One would think that the self-professed leaders of the fight to save the unborn would have at least some regard for innocent adult life, as well, and would give the moral hand-wringing a rest long enough to actually think about what they are arguing for.

In true liberal fashion (see “Silent Spring” for example, among others), is Mr. Carter content to allow innocents elsewhere (let alone at home) to die needlessly, as long as he can sleep at night knowing that, whatever may happen to others as a result of the decision not to engage in actual information-gathering, the U.S. is shortsightedly keeping its moral slate clean by refusing to allow anybody to do anything that he might, with no regard for context, feel the slightest bit of compunction about.

That's not remotely fair to Joe -- he's not arguing about salving his own conscience, he's talking about doing something that he perceives as genuine involvement with capital-E Evil.

I also add that using "true liberal fashion" as an insult is belied by sentences like One would think that the self-professed leaders of the fight to save the unborn would have at least some regard for innocent adult life, as well. If that's not a classic liberal hogwash, nothing is.

Like I said, I'm largely on your side of this debate, especially with regard to waterboarding; but this is so rough, it's genuinely unlike you.

Posted at 6:07pm on Nov. 6, 2007 Let Me Begin By Noting That I'm a Huge Fan of Joe Carter

By Thomas

With that said, if you excerpt the bits about waterboarding being per se torture, then he's absolutely right; if you include the assertion-without-argument (except for the appeals to authority, which I hope we can all ignore) that waterboarding is torture, he's astray.

Let's be clear about two things here: First: Arguing for torture does indeed constitute a moral illness in itself. Second: As Father Neuhaus has noted, one need not condone the event to note that sometimes men will resort to what they perceive as a lesser evil to avoid a greater one, or even to attempt a good.

My problem, Alex, with your and Joe's position is not that torture is wrong; it is that to call it torture is to expand the definition so wide as to rob the word of real meaning. Torture constitutes horrible things; it encompasses a world of bodily pain inflicted to degrade a human will and a human person from the outside in. Because we define it as such, we are able to hold our social opprobium in place. Once we start expanding the word to include things like waterboarding -- sorry, I know too many people who've been waterboarded to think it's torture, and Lord knows they don't describe it that way -- then we begin to undermine the taboo by robbing the word of its import. Put differently: If "torture" consists of normal or even comprehensible things, then torture will become normal and comprehensible.

I dissent.

Posted at 8:19pm on Nov. 5, 2007 Game Theory and Party Politics

By Thomas

It's another Giuliani/Huckabee diary. If just those five words are enough to turn your stomach, you should probably read something else.

Anyway: We're in the middle of something a lot of folks haven't really seen since 1980, and perhaps haven't seen in their lifetimes: A well-and-truly contested Republican Presidential Primary. Now, because we're unused to it, it's my theory that we don't remember how to react; and because the Party was a very different animal then, the coalition of groups who compose it have little to no institutional memory of how to resolve formational problems before they get out of hand.

Put differently: Depending on which candidate is ascendant at any given time, a lot of otherwise good-faith Republicans are threatening to take their ball and run away, because they don't know precisely what else to do.

I'm not going to sit here and argue that anyone must vote for this guy, or must not vote for that one; I'm not going to get into the middle of the what-happens-when-the-general-comes argument. I have enough headaches without engaging that.

What I'd like to do is offer every camp an insight into why we are where we are, and point to some possible resolutions of the problem. I would suggest that we need to get this done now, rather than, say, September 2008. So, if you have some time, read on.

Posted in 2008 | conservative crackup | Mike Huckabee | Republican crackup | Republicans | Rudy Giuliani — Comments (39) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:45pm on Oct. 23, 2007 "Irony" isn't just the taste in your mouth after the bridle comes out, Andrew.

By Thomas

Displaying that remarkable, cutting insight that has made him the toast of left-wing nuthouses everywhere ... well, let's just offer Andrew Sullivan in his own words.

RedState has now done what the rest of the GOP establishment would like to do: they've banned all discussion of Ron Paul from their bulletin boards, comment threads and interactive forums. Money quote:

Andrew (I can call you that, right?) then quotes two paragraphs limiting that discussion to established users.

But! The best part? The comments on Andrew's site discussing...

Oh, right. Yeah. No comments. Fascism is alive and well, and it has shacked up with dramatic irony (and they're such a cute couple!) in a corner of The Atlantic.