So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I guess now that he was the source of your summation line and so I missed the irony. Someone could have told me.

That is a valuable soundbite Karen! Your adaptation of Reagan’s words may serve as fine focus for conservatives treated worse than Mrs. Teasdale.

mac: What are you going to do when the police officers show up at your house to confiscate your guns?

I expect that, before police had time to show up on your doorstep, there would be so much massive protest and such a slew of lawsuits flooding the courts that any actual enforcement would have to be at least postponed. Then, if the courts fail, I would hope that local authorities would refuse to follow orders. I just can’t believe that Americans will allow themselves to be disarmed.

I know what I’m going to do and I’ve already steeled myself for the consequences.

Have you made up your minds? Have you even thought about it?

One anecdote: Last spring I overheard two college girls talking about the primary candidates. One remarked to her friend that, “Well I obviously like Obama, but I really like this Ron Paul guy.” After the double take I pressed her on this. I realized that she inclined towards the Messiah because the culture told her to, but that she might have more conservative instincts than realized. So maybe there’s hope for all us young idiots (I’m in favor of pushing the voting age back towards twenty-five at least, we’re not responsible enough as a generation yet).

I’m doing some volunteer campaign work for a non-profit in North Carolina, suddenly a swing state. Anyone with contacts/information, feel free to drop me a line.

What have you been reading?

I think we are served best when we allow our secular world to be informed by religious principles. Right now, at best, that is currently being blocked.

I think most of the current problems are due to a battle waged by pessimists against optimists. As I have explained it at length, I see religious principles tending to coincide with optimists. The drum beat to exclude from the public arena those who use religious phrases (the wrong shibboleths) is due to having permitted the pessimistic view to have gained the upper hand. For the most part, optimists let it happen unwittingly because they didn’t really know why they were under attack.

The real problem may just be the sea-change in people’s beliefs. That surely contributes. What large numbers been herded away from and what they’ve been indoctrinated to corresponds with what they’ve been taught to ridicule and what they’ve been told they must tolerate. That our institutions had degraded so much into MisInfo and MinInfo now is far more widely accepted (though these mocking names haven’t yet taken hold as quickly as some others). Where there are democratic elections it is preferable that desired policies at least appear to have percolated up. How did they come to believe these things? Well, who regulates the policy of what schools teach? Who influences what editorial bent manages the media? We’ve witnessed the incubation of the Ministry of Truth.

In the public arena…. There is where real conservatism has been tarnished and will continue to be so until we find a way of getting the majority to recognize in how many ways they too are conservative and that conservatism represents them better than any label the power hungerers claim belongs to them.

BTW. Your use of the term “the public arena” and your later phrase “speeded up and is rushing us” suggests to me that it is time to update the oldest entry in my glossary, the Ideological Corral. It was suggested to me back to the mid seventies. Your phrase here echoes one I used there “moving a great deal faster all the time.” So I bet since its operation is clearer now than ever before, functionality has changed.

A corral is inclusive. An arena is exclusionary. Those who insist on standing by the old standards, the right-most anchors of the corral before those running the show decided to pull up stakes, now find themselves outside without voices inside to champion their causes.

In the arena postmodernism is preferred to modernism; science has been supplanted by post-normal science; Progressives employ Luddites; liberals are preoccupied with what can be tolerated. You want entry? Better bone up on shibboleths.

In the public arena, as has been noted before, real conservatism is pretty much confined to the blogosphere and talk radio and only an occasional legislator like Sen. James Inhofe. Real conservatism, along with real Christianity, offers the best opportunity for the country to be rightly guided, but neither one is exactly widely esteemed these days. BTW, your interest in applying religious principles to the secular world’s problems is very intriguing.

If America wins a reprieve, what then? Well, if McCain wins, then I think our system of government will have won a reprieve, viz., the trend toward socialism will have hit a snag. I will breathe a sigh of relief and hope that the future brings new leaders who’ll restore conservatism’s luster. But although it seems like so much hangs on this election, I still have the feeling that no matter who wins, time has speeded up and is rushing us toward – ugh, I hate to say ‘destiny.’ But I don’t know what else to call it. The judgment of the nations?

I know it is not only my opinion that the problem with the GOP can be found in how thoroughly in control are those who cling to the status quo. I tried to address it a couple of years ago with Understanding Who Blocks Reform as suggested by Matthew 19:24: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

The gist of it centers on what you just wrote. Due to the love of the status quo, broader conservatism has always been in danger from its leaders, and certainly from our current ones. Why? Because those who are happy with their lot will block reforms simply out of fear that fixing things MIGHT rock their boat. Power inclines to prerogatives favorable to it.

Sad to say, events of the last few weeks strongly support my view; what is threatening us further is sustaining it.

Konyok, I know how reluctant you are to agree with such a view. Still I imagine even you have to agree its probability has grown.

George Bush or his Dad repeatedly feted the likes of Kennedy during his 8 years. And now we have video and audio of the after-debate feast in New York. It tells us McCain is funnier and clearer than Bush. It also shows us that he is on much better terms with our tormentors. He doesn’t call them names; he jokes with them.

Where is McCain’s disdain, opprobrium and long renowned anger? Oh that? That he reserves for his base.

Karen. 1. Let us assume that by some great gift of Providence the country votes against Obama and wins the election for us. 2. There seems unprecedented possibility in America that the Left, aided by its control of information institutions, will stage something stronger than a protest of the results. But let us presume we come out well in that too.

America will have won a reprieve.

What then?

Bob, I wish the word ‘conservative’ wasn’t so absurdly elastic that it would apply to a regime like that in Saudi Arabia. Conservatism is a lot more than simply preserving the status quo, whatever or wherever that status quo may be. Our American conservatism stems from our own customs, conventions and prescriptions, nobody else’s. It doesn’t travel well, imo, which is why I always had doubts about democratizing Iraq. But I second your comments. Yes, we should be on the offensive, challenging our pigeonholing by the left which depicts us as legitimate objects of scorn and ridicule and gets away with it.

Konyok: reaching across the aisle must not compromise core principles.