The first chill wind interrupting the fun

Rod Dreher: "Bottom line: the Louisiana vote was about Louisiana, not national politics."

Perhaps. And that is certainly the way things might look from the DMN newsroom. Among professional Democrats around K Street, though, the Jindal win, combined with Niki Tsongas barely squeaking by in the special election for a supposedly "safe" House seat in Massachusetts and the fact that, damn it, things are going better in Iraq, are creating the first chill wind interrupting the fun. There is no panic yet, but certainly there is a growing realization that 2008 is by no means going to be the slam-dunk that they thought it would be as late as a month ago.

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As with everything, caveat emptor.

Neither the MSNBC piece's author, nor any of the commenters so far, has been able to mention the 800 lb. gorilla in the room: a sizable number of those workmen who provided the labor army to construct the McMansions now falling apart were illegal aliens. Ask a contractor you trust to be honest about it and you'll hear about how, in the rush to cut costs and get these new developments up and running in double-quick time, they resorted to hiring Guatemalan and Mexican peasants who knew as much going into the job about putting up drywall or laying down floors as Lindsay Lohan. Some of them perhaps got enough on the job experience to have eventually learned, so if you are considering buying one of these places in "Chesterfield Oaks" or somesuch, snap up one of the last ones completed, not the initial models. But the contractors who've spoken have said in most cases, the seasonal labor employed to build the various Tollbrothersburgs were finally paid off only marginally more skilled than when they started. As with everything, caveat emptor.

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Isn't it obvious?

Isn't it obvious? Ross has carefully crafted his comments on l'affaire Beauchamps because he's gunning for the TNR editorship after they can Foer. He can't afford to bash that rag too much, and yet can't very well look to be leaping to Foer's defense if he has any hope of being brought in to be the housecleaning white knight in the wake of the scandal.

Ross would be perfect: he's young (the average age of a new TNR editor-in-chief has been around 29 or 30 for some time now), he's been very adeptly playing the role of The Thoughtful Conservative Who Badly Wants To Be Liked By Liberals (a schtick pioneered by David Brooks and Christopher Caldwell), and he's ready for a promotion.

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Changes to the American Language

Let me put the question to the room: How do you think the Iraq War experience will change the American language?

"Redeploy" has already become a euphemism for "retreat"

"I support the troops" now is code for "I don't support the mission"

"Meatgrinder" now refers to four-year campaigns with under 10% of the Allied casualty total of one Western Front battle (Passchendaele), with consequent adjustment in western resolve levels.

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Try this counterfactual

Try this counterfactual: suppose Britain had acquiesced in say, 1775, to allowing for North American representation in Parliament. Then what reason can Whitehall give for denying additional parliamentary representation to British sugar planters in the West Indies?

Historically these planters (and their investors back in Bristol, etc.) were richer than anyone else in the 18th century. They didn't see any need to agitate for representation--they simply BOUGHT OFF MPs from British constituencies, rotten or not. But give them elected MPs in addition to those from the royal colonies of the Carolinas, Virginia, etc., and you create a large, well-funded pro-slavery bloc that I could easily see dragging out the abolition of the slave trade for a long time past 1833, and the continuation of colonial slavery for years beyond that.

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Fair point, I apologize. Still...

Mr. K, the reason that fbc and I both cited bar association work is that, in your initial post, you say you have never met a paleo who is "a member of a local professional organization." To then say how unimpressed you are with bar association work is pure unadulterated goal-post shifting. Color me unimpressed.

Fair point, I apologize. Still, the spirit of mentioning professional associations was meant to imply something of a true give-and-take guild, where the members are constantly refining standards of quality, weeding out the bad apples, and driving the profession's evolution. Something I think we can all agree bar associations have generally failed to accomplish in the past few decades.

What pro-paleo lawyerly professional activity outside the billable hours would I be impressed with? Organizing and chartering an Inn of Court. Working with a diocesan chancellor (or his/her Protestant or Orthodox equivalent) to build a diocesan legal network that would be a pro bono machine equal to any secular counterpart in your area. Establishing a local version of the Becket Fund. Working with the county and state GOP general counsels to lead the deployment of teams of polling place watchers and recount observers, and organizing seminars on election law to train them.

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As an admitted attorney myself, color me deeply unimpressed.

Paleocon here...member of multiple bar associations from the ABA on the national level to my local county bar association, where I serve on the courthouse committee

As an admitted attorney myself, color me deeply unimpressed. Harriet Miers tried to spin the same sow's ear into a judicial silk purse, but while some non-lawyers may believe that bar association schmoozing (in between hustling for speeding ticket cases and getting the monthly cut from the mortgage broker who shares your office building) makes one a real man of the polis, there are others who know better.

Coached kindergarten YMCA flag football team to unbeaten 13-0 season.

Congratulations, seriously. Plus you put yourself in a position where there were plenty of potential clients if one of the little tykes got hurt.

20 years as a Republican volunteer to various local, state and national campaigns. Volunteering, contributing, active Republican (til George W. Bush, that is.) Precinct captain, delegate to state Republican convention.

Twenty years of activism and you finished as precinct captain? With one state convention thrown in as a sop? That's kind of sad, actually. I can understand your disillusionment with the GOP. You'll be happier in your state Reform Party organization.

pure unadulterated bullsh*t

I guess the asterix is what paleos mean by "striving for a culture of virtue."

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I almost did, but realized that the usual objections would be made.

You could probably add joined the Army to that list.

I almost did, but realized that the usual objections would be made. Some variation of "well, not to imply that I don't have the highest regard for our dedicated men and women in uniform (etc. etc.) but the armed forces aren't a good example of an organic community...and in answering to federal authority, it's part of Leviathan, etc. etc."

Plus there's that whole going into harm's way hurdle.

Paleos: okay, you say you believe in being part of a community of free men that take responsibility for their own defense, but you don't want to join the National Guard?

Fine, then join the State Guard. (Rod: and Daniel: ) No foreign deployments to worry about.

Or join the Civil Air Patrol. Or the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Be an adult leader of Naval Sea Cadets, or, if you live in AK, OH, NY, or NJ, join the state Naval Militia. Study and get an amateur radio license and join a civil defense RACES/ARES network. Heck, learn to shoot in a club affiliated with the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

There are a million ways to make a worthwhile contribution without having to worry that you are a 21st century Kantorek (Paul Bäumer's teacher).

But in my experience most paleocons aren't "joiners." Neither are libertarians, but the point is that neither position absolves one from the responsibility of being part of organizations for the common good--if anything the positions give a greater responsibility to someone to make themselves of service, since they so loudly want the federal leviathan to not assume duties that they should shoulder themselves.

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Shea, as usual, has it half-correct.

Shea, as usual, has it half-correct. ~80% of the libertarians I know are certifiable misanthropes.

Guess what, though? So are the vast majority of Paleocons I've known--Shea's "traditionalist conservatives" and libertarians share more personal qualities than I think either would care to admit, and one quality in particular:

Poliphobia. It is one of the great practical fallacies of both libertarianism and even religiously tinged Paleoconservatism. Both are philosophies that tend to attract disproportionate numbers of people who have no real public spirit whatsoever, no poliphilia.

For all their talk of "little platoons" or "subsidiarity" or "small is beautiful", I've never yet met a bow-tied, suspendered paleocon ready with his book of Anti-Federalist quotes who'd ever worked as, say

* a suicide hotline volunteer, or
* a member of a local professional organization, or
* even as a Little League coach.

I'm sure there are some out there, (probably the types of organic farmers that Rod profiled in his book, who live that kind of involved life but who wouldn't recognize names like Chesterton or Sobran if they bit them) but a clear majority of hardcore paleos are virtually indistinguishable from libertarians: folks who feel that the rest of humanity is, well, stupid, and sort of worthless, and who vaguely wish that we'd just go away and stop bothering them. The libertarians feel this way because they intellectually superior, while the paleo adds the additional gloss that God Is With Him as opposed to those great unwashed.

Quick: name the recognizable paleocon writer, journalist, blogger, what have you who has ever held public office, been appointed to a board or commission, been an active party organizer, or worked on the steering committee of a political campaign. Or has regularly attended town meetings, organized petition drives, marched in rallies or protests.

Nothing wrong with not doing those things... but to then turn around and tell the rest of us how we should be organizing our political lives are like virgins telling the rest of us how to have sex. It's literally idiotic, in the original sense of the world.

Politics, like sex, is a subject in which no amount of reading can compensate for a complete lack of practical experience. A pox on both their houses.

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The key to understanding Larison

The key to understanding Larison is to remember the most traumatic and formative event of his childhood: the night a horrified six-year-old Daniel watched in terror as an intruder to his New Mexico home brutally murdered his parents with an axe. That intruder was let off on a technicality, and later founded a investment bank, ran the 2002 Winter Olympics, and was elected Governor of Massachusetts.

What, you say it never happened? Doesn't it explain his blogging obsessions better than anything else? Heck, I'd finger the killer as Abraham Lincoln, but he has an alibi: he died some 110 years before that terrible night in Albuquerque.

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Miraculous Train Ride

We hate flying so much that we take the train. We have family in Michigan and take the 10+ hour train trip there.

That sounds fish-, er, miraculous. There is no direct Amtrak service between Washington Union Station and Detroit. Unless you decided to leave out the part about transfering to a bus in Toledo, making it a 15 hour trip minimum (in that perfect world where Amtrak runs on time for a change), or were actually talking about taking the train to Chicago and then doubling back to Detroit, I am skeptical. Please tell me exactly how I could get from suburban Maryland to southeastern Michigan in a little over 10 hours by rail. I don't think you can.

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Rod, could you please add a disclaimer

I strongly believe that airlines should be forbidden from overbooking flights -- even if that means higher ticket prices for all of us. I strongly believe that airlines should be forced to have contingency plans in place for stranded passengers (food reserves, cots, blankets, pillows) -- even if that means higher ticket prices for all of us. And it's beyond obvious that the FAA needs to get its act together with the air traffic control system -- even if that means higher ticket prices for all of us.

Rod, could you please add a disclaimer that your round-trip ticket from Dallas to Istanbul was paid for by someone else--either the event organizers, or charged to the Belo expense account? Unless you made the journey out of your own savings, any cri de coeur demanding "higher ticket prices for all of us" should be either qualified thusly or rephrased as "higher ticket prices for others."

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I'm sorry you're irritated, but...

What irritates me is your assumption that I'm "gratuitously" and intentionally slamming the RC hierarchy. I'm sorry you're irritated, but a throwaway line about an unsubstantiated story about a Catholic bishop at the end of a post about Methodists is definitionally gratuitous. That word is what it is, it doesn't mean wrong, or malevolent, or whatever, it just means that it had no purpose in telling the story at hand. As a journalist you should know the value of economy of narration.

A stunningly credible source

The Riverfront Times? Now there's a stunningly credible source. On a par with citing Dan Savage as a reliable commenter on Deus Caritas Est. Even then, please note that the story you cite offers no substantation to the charge whatsoever. It simply repeats a second-hand allegation (an attachment to a Holy Office inquiry), made third-hand by the RFT's mention of it. Made fourth-hand by your repition of it. Rod, I'll make you a deal. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this and offer an apology if you could get this assertion as is past your editorial supervisor at DMN and into print.

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You're a professional journalist?

Wasn't there a Catholic bishop not too long ago who gave permission for a man surgically rearranged to resemble a woman to enter a convent as a nun? Is it a rule of this blog that every post regarding a given non-RC denomination has to include a gratuitous slam at the Catholic hierarchy? Even if it has to be accomplished by simple assertion without citation, support or factual basis, as here? You're a professional journalist?

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On Gary Keillor

The funny thing is that Gary Keillor (his real name, by the way--"Garrison" is just what he started calling himself as an adult because it sounds so much more urbane and literary) is pretty much where I see Rod's trajectory headed over the next few years. Not that I expect him to leave Julie, mind you, just that by, 2015 at the latest, I expect him to continue to aver that he is "personally" offended by mainstream culture and is at heart a man of puritanical, conservative opinions, who nevertheless toes the left party line on account of things like the environment, health care, and whatever hard, dirty work we have to be undertaking in the Middle East at that time.

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