Indeed so. Invoking an abstracted ‘Humanity’ in the course of pointing up their own tacit moral perfection by decrying the shortcomings of others seems to me a tactic for a form of stealthy competition in a hyper-individualistic milieu, one whose cunning and evil is such that it dare not speak its name.

Despair, of course, is where his view of human nature naturally leads — if you don’t believe in Christ. If we’re the ones who are in charge, despair is a natural reaction, since humanity is dead in sin (Paul).

Derbyshire’s conservatism is a godless conservatism. Unlike religious conservatives, he doesn’t believe in the Lord’s eschaton, and unlike liberals, he has deduced that man cannot create his own.

It’s a sterile, harsh, and joyless world view.

Naseem Taleeb in “The Black Swan” does a convincing job mathematically of showing why Socialist solutions are so quintessentially irrational. Mind you, he is not a conservative. He is a polymath who shows what is possible and what is not – ever. Predicting the future, even while acting to produce a specific outcome, is a hopeless task. In this regard, I am certain that lawyer Obama never predicted the difficulties he would face in turning America into a place he could be proud of.

Sure would be nice to have more academic discussions like this on PJ Media

John Derbyshire is also a pro-abortion secularist. In back of his mind, he may not really want a successful conservative revolution. Derbyshire rightfully senses that Sarah Palin and her allies will be calling the shots. “Moderate” Republicans will have to ask themselves this awkward and uneasy question: how much do I truly value a growing economy and a strong national defense?

I once heard a good illustration of this as “Everybody wants to save the world; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

Huh? That belief undermined royalty being “divinely inspired”. It led to checks and balances in the American system. Our constitution anticipated the tyrannical quest for power in some, and so enumerated only the powers granted. It is the basis of R. Reagan’s “trust but verify”.

The left harbors the utopian view that everyone who is poor could be successful if only they had a hand up. But the unintended consequences of their nannying has made it increasingly difficult to earn a living. Two acres used to be enough to survive before liquor-making was seized from the poor. Today, you need a license to cut hair.

To me, it all comes down to this: the individual or the collective.

Conservatives choose the former …. Progressives/Liberals/Leftists, the latter.

Whichever the philosophical underpinnings, the love and quest for money and power is overriding. Hence the sad fact that our Congress and the Executive have become little more than crimial enterprises.