Yes, Roger. As usual, you hit the main point, simply and clearly. But no better example of failure in social-cultural-political articulation is needed than the last Republican presidential campaign. It was, presumably, designed and managed by some of conservatism’s best and brightest. If so, we are justified in depression!

You, like me and a host of others, applauded and were moved by most (but not all) of McCain’s positions. They were just and justified. But even in cases where clarity would have been easy to achieve, his articulation was muddy and his points either ambiguous or grossly over-simplified.

The attractive and likeable Gov. Palin was even worse. The pair were addressing the party’s LCD, and only that. On the late-emerging economic issues, neither they not (since then)any strong conservative voice has uttered comprehensible alternatives to the Democrats’ juggernaut. All they’ve done is to cry “statism,” and “socialism.”

Those words mean very little to most voters these days. Most voters these days lack even the elementary historical and cultural knowledge required to understasnd those words. Most voters are products of the failed educational system of the past three decades. And no conservative has taught them the necessary lessons in history and political economy through the medium of speeches. The media won’t help. It has to be done viva voce!

Conservatism will have no renaissance here until it is once again a set of rational, articulate, informed, and eloquent positions on what we are and have been, and what we must do to survive that way and not as just another stumbling postmodern polity of the West. Who will say and do it? And where?