Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings and The Art of the Possible has joined the conversation on neoconservatism and its future. He's skeptical about my claim that "[t]he neocons are in a decidedly weak position" and risk becoming marginalized in the likely event of a McCain defeat in November. And rightly so; what I should have said is that the neoconservatives are now in a weaker position than at any prior point in the history of their movement, which—to be fair—isn't the equivalent of being on the brink of dissolution. Jim ably outlines the reasons their total demise is not likely, which fall into roughly three groupings:

1. The neoconservatives' ample structural and tactical advantages within the Republican party;
   
2. The woeful disarray of the internal opposition—which seems more interested at the moment in tearing itself to pieces through mutual recriminations and excommunications than in building a coalition to regain control of the GOP;
   
3. The fact that every country has and always will have a nationalist party, and that the neoconservatives have made their beliefs the default American nationalism.

Unless Barack Obama really is the messiah, it stands to reason that regardless of what happens in November, theNot This Time neoconservatives will remain solidly in power in the Republican party for the foreseeable future, and will be poised to return to government in the event of either domestic or foreign misfortune.

To see why that assumption might nevertheless be wrong, let's make some careful discriminations.

First of all, retaining control of a defeated GOP is not equivalent to retaining a position next-in-line to control of government. Suppose that Obama and the Democrats win the presidential election convincingly and reduce the Republican congressional delegation to a rump caucus of the deep south and sun belt. In such a scenario, control of the GOP may be worth nothing or less than nothing.

Two-party systems are less stable than a cursory glance at their history suggests; the reason the same two parties have competed for control of the government for the last 150 years is because a series of distinct and incompatible institutions have succeeded each other in using the names "Democrats" and "Republicans." The Liberal Party of Britain, which under Gladstone was the party of the Empire and of the sun never setting, held a strong national majority just before WWI. The Liberals then committed Britain to a war that destroyed its empire, at the conclusion of which they were virtually wiped out and relegated to a small handful of seats in Parliament, persisting tenuously and irrelevantly in a kind of unlife for decades until they were absorbed by a splinter faction of Labour. So there is precedent for major parties, even major imperialist parties, to go belly up through democratic means. This is not to suggest that the Republican party itself is in danger of going out of business, but rather that it could be reduced to an ineffectual minority for the indefinite future (the demographic dynamics, in addition to everything else, look really bad for them), in which time there would potentially be space for some other party to become the Second Party. Moreover, if the Republican defeat makes the GOP sufficiently small, it could put the neocons on roughly even terms with factions antagonistic to them, and inspire allied factions (the anti-tax crowd, the Evangelicals, etc.) to break their tactical alignment with the neocons, since the downside of the social conservatives, Chamber of Commerce Bolsheviks, and the rest not caring enough about foreign policy to intervene in any way in what the neocons do, is that they have no incentive to maintain any cooperation once they no longer profit from doing so.

Second, let's explore what is meant by 'neoconservatism' and who the 'neocons' are. It's a tricky task, trickier than it has any right to be, not least because neoconservatives rarely use the term, and even then use it more frequently to insinuate that their opponents are conspiratorial anti-semites than to say anything informative about it, and also because neoconservatism is consciously constructed by its adherents to resist straightforward definition. So it's much easier to get a handle on what it is by defining it recursively, to borrow a concept from math.

Try this: Begin with the paradigmatic examples of contemporary neoconservatives— you're looking for surnames like "Kristol," "Kagan," and "Podhoretz" here; take the rank and file scriveners of the movement, like some of the writers at National Review, a larger proportion of Weekly Standard contributors, and virtually everyone who writes for Commentary; and finally use induction to fill in the cluster of beliefs that links the movement's archetypes to its ordinary membership. The first thing to notice is that the cluster of core neoconservative beliefs are quite few in number and consist largely in negations of various liberal norms, e.g.:

• war is only justified under atypical and extreme circumstances when all other options are demonstrably non-viable;
  
• diplomacy is the first tool of foreign policy with adversarial states and is a deliberative process with no predetermined outcome;
  
• rules of ethical conduct are universal and exceptions to them only arise in exceptional circumstances, not out of some individual or country's pretensions to an exceptional identity;
  
• resources are scarce (not uniquely liberal but still an important proposition that neoconservatism, as practiced by neoconservatives, effectively denies).

Those few beliefs, however, trade on thick, idiosyncratic concepts like "national will," which are imported from the philosophical canon but warped in transit and don't actually correspond to anything within it.

Minimal reflection on these points should demonstrate the absurdity of Robert Kagan's identification of neoconservatism with the whole of the internationalist tradition, in turn identified as the entire history of non-isolationist thought on foreign affairs. (Compare: Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes were both capitalists.) Because neoconservatism comprises negations of basic liberal norms, it fundamentally is not compatible with liberal internationalism. Yet neither is it immediately identifiable with just any sort of expansionist illiberal nationalism, because the thickness and idiosyncrasies of its concepts make it a poor fit—ultimately, an impossible fit, because it's a cosmopolitan belief system (albeit in a perverse way), and thus eschews various concepts of blood and soil that belong, in American political history, to the paleo tradition.

In other words, neoconservatism is a very small, idiosyncratic movement; and it is entirely a movement of intellectuals. There is no neoconservative constituency within the body of a democratic polity (nor can there be—as the Converse studies show, "mass publics" cannot, in practice, comprehend ideology at anything approaching the level of sophistication a genuine commitment to neoconservatism requires). This is quite unlike ideologies such as communism, libertarianism, populism, welfare liberalism, social conservatism, even single-issue dogmatic opposition to taxes; i.e., ideologies composed first and foremost of publicly accessible beliefs with immediate mass appeal. Indeed, the neoconservative universe is so small that it excludes individuals who at least at one time were prominently identified with the movement, like Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and Francis Fukuyama. (What happened? The meaning of 'neoconservatism,' recursively defined by the beliefs of the neoconservatives, changed.)

Even within the movement, there is a detectable two-tiered hierarchy, a division between its theorists and its missionaries (which is true of any ideology). Hence someone like Kagan, Lawrence Kaplan, or even Paul Wolfowitz—informed, reflective thinkers, however one evaluates their thinking—is a different sort of neocon from the crew that blogs for Commentary, whose political philosophy, from what I can glean through my RSS feed, consists entirely in using and misusing words they don't know, alongside occasional sops to evolution denialism and global warming denialism, in the service of making their marginal contribution to destabilizing the globe and instigating wars. Which is to say that the true extension of robust neoconservative thought (i.e., excluding conceptually-confused, true-only-if-Gettierized propaganda) is even smaller than simple recursion suggests.

Neoconservatism is not unique for being an exclusively elite movement with limited membership. The same is true of foreign policy realism, a venerable technocratic system of belief, and there are any number of further examples (at least one for every specialized technical doctrine regarding a policy question or family of policy questions). It's hardly insidious in and of itself that neoconservatism, like realism but unlike communism and social conservatism, is strictly an intellectual movement—which is nothing but an instance of some of the Converse findings. Rather, it's just a fact that neoconservatism cannot, under any practically relevant circumstances, be a mass ideology. (What does distinguish it from other non-mass belief systems is the unusual extent to which, thanks to the Straussian influence, its adherents consciously revel in its public inaccessibility.) So the only way for it to be a successful movement on a large scale is by playing certain functional roles in a genuine mass ideology.

That's how neoconservatism provides the content of contemporary American nationalism. Its rejection of liberal norms, its belligerence, and especially its exceptionalism make it a suitable candidate for performing the function of giving nationalism a concrete platform to adhere to. But it's not the only suitable candidate for that role, and not even necessarily the most natural candidate, since it is at root a cosmopolitan ideology (though David Gelernter is working on fixing that). Hence Jim's point that there will always be nationalism wherever there's a nation is well-taken, but doesn't prejudice things in favor of neoconservatism retaining its dominant position. True blood and soil volkism can play the same role without importing anything from neoconservatism, though the result of that wouldn't exactly be an improvement on present circumstances.

On the other hand, various strains of paleoconservatism—which is much closer to being a mass ideology than neo-ism— especially the 'postmodern conservatism' James Poulos has been cultivating, reject elements of liberalism and provide grounds for national (or regional, or local) exceptionalism that are not bloodthirsty in either intent or effect. Likewise, the reformist conservatism of, say, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam among others (Ramesh Ponnuru comes to mind as well), provides a motivation for grand unifying national projects and for fostering a spirit of special national purpose that has nothing to do with war. Which is to say that there are an array of candidate alternatives to neoconservatism for playing the role neoconservatism presently plays in American nationalism; and if any of them were to supersede neoconservatism as the intellectual movement that fills in the content of ineradicable non-liberal mass ideologies, the world would be a better, less violent place. Not necessarily because any of these alternatives is overwhelmingly compelling (none ultimately compelling to me; I'm a non-conservative cheering them along from the sidelines), but because making the world a better place relative to what neoconservatism has done is a fairly low bar to clear.

All of which is, I hope, an informative way of saying that Jim is right about point 1) that neocons are in a much stronger position structurally, tactically, and temperamentally than their GOP opponents and point 2) that the Republican factions opposed to the neocons are horrendously incompetent at the basic tasks of political organizing and too invested in internecine wars of purity, yet simultaneously too compromised by associations that the public, fairly or not, judges to be electoral non-starters, to mount a credible challenge to the neocons at this moment. Jim's point 3), however—that neoconservatism = American nationalism = the Republican party view writ large—comes apart on close scrutiny of what neoconservatism is. If it's just a catch-all for any illiberal, aggressive, exceptionalist theory of international relations, then it is indeed firmly ensconced not only in the Republican party but in America as a whole; but the perpetuation of neoconservatism so understood is therefore compatible with the fall and marginalization of the actual power players and centers of neoconservatism.

Alternatively, if neoconservatism is the ideology describable by recursion on the beliefs (sincere beliefs, that is, not doublethink or Straussian exoteric deceit) of Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, John Bolton, Norman Podhoretz, Joe Lieberman, Paul Wolfowitz, et al., then all that prejudices our politics in favor of neoconservatism are the movement's comparative strengths, and the comparative weaknesses of internal opposition to it within the GOP. But the neocons' strengths and their Republican opponents' weaknesses are contingent qualities. The balance of power could easily tilt the other way under different circumstances. That fact provides a rationale, the only rationale I can think of at this late date, for continuing to identify as a Republican and participate in the party's internal debates, namely helping some congenial wing of the paleocons or the burgeoning reformists (I suspect that libertarian desertion of the party is too far advanced at this point for the libertarians to play a meaningful role in such disputes anymore) take control of the party's foreign policy apparatus from the neoconservatives. That would be, as my people say, תיקון עולם.

For these same reasons, ultimately, I don't share Jim's pessimism. Nationalism may be ineradicable without the eradication of the state, but that doesn't mean it's static and impossible to influence. In particular, it doesn't always have to be what it is now; in fact, it's palpably less confident, aggressive, and smothering (though perhaps by the same token more desperate) than it was even four years ago. As Ezra Klein perceptively noted a while back, the shift in the musical backdrop for this election compared to the last one is a telling analogue to the clearer air this year.

In their attempt to maintain a grip on power, the neoconservatives will of course, as Jim writes, deploy a Dolchstoßlegende; but the move isn't guaranteed to work, and in this case, the odds may well be against it, because the targets of the backstabbing allegation wouldn't just be sinister unnamed internal aliens, but the vast majority of Americans. Likewise, Jim lists the neocons' energetic commitment to foreign policy, which far outstrips that of any other GOP factions, as one of their key strengths. Not only that, but the narrowness of their agenda—their sublime indifference, at least in outward expression, to the outcome of key disputes in the party over domestic and social policy (they'd just go with the winning side in the end)—allowed them to leverage a dominant position in the party's foreign policy apparatus. What happens, though, if a monomanical dedication to a narrow foreign policy agenda becomes a political weakness?

In other words, what if—what if?—a new administration ends the war; abruptly puts a stop to its predecessor's crude and badly misplaced Hegelian language of world-historical conflicts (and also its predecessor's war crimes); quietly wages the police campaign that should have begun years ago to put al Qaeda out of business, while delivering free trade, investment in energy development, and international markets to Iran in exchange for liberalizing reforms in the society and curtailment of nuclear research; restores comprehensive arms control and establishes a comprehensive non-proliferation framework; and devotes the bulk of its attention to economic, environmental, good government, and energy supply reforms? What if that new administration comes to power by exclaiming—again and again and again and again—the need to "end the mindset that got us into war"?

What if that new administration comes to power on the strength of a resounding victory over the most prominent and vociferous exponent of neoconservatism in American political life? Without the the leader of the free world and his ministers sternly and ominously preaching Apocalypse from the West Wing every day, without the TV issuing color-coded directives about when to become terrified, with the nation's attention finally turned away from fighting World War ℵ₀, who will be there to listen to or care about the lie that Glorious Triumph was ordained to happen 6 months after t (where t=whatever time it is now)? Who will listen or care, apart from anti-warriors on both the right and left who won't have forgotten what the weasels did to our Constitution, to 4000 of our people, and hundreds of thousands of another country's people?

Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but the neocons can be defeated and marginalized, either by internal opponents within the GOP taking control, or else, if they can't be dislodged from their perch in the party, then by marginalizing the party itself. (What would a marginalized neoconservative movement look like? That it would be riven by internecine fighting is a near given, but beyond that the example of the realists is instructive. Like the neocons, the realists had no actual constituency; once the neocons superseded them as the party's technocratic elite, the realists were reduced to a small cohort of living fossils, many of whom are happy to align themselves with the neocons for a whiff of power. The moral is that there is no total redemption, and that crowd in particular is as resilient as zombies. Given enough time, they may rehabilitate themselves. But any period in which they are irrelevant and ignored is reason to cheer.)

The circumstances on the ground after a McCain defeat, especially a convincing McCain defeat, will be unlike anything the neoconservative movement has experienced. The trajectory of their prominence and influence has been uniformly upwards from the foundation of their movement, but not until this administration became a war presidency—not even under Ronald Reagan, whose greatest triumphs were knowing when to cut losses in Lebanon, and peacefully winding down the Cold War through a combination of diplomacy and spending, for which, recall, the neocons thanked him with a little Dolchstoßlegende (of course)—did they get to wield true power and put their theory into practice. We all know the rest.

Had they been less adroit in forming coalitions and accumulating power, had the realists been more alert to the threat to their position, had the neocons not been so fluent in adopting the language of humanitarian interventionism to sweet-talk the liberal hawks who ultimately eviscerated the opposition to the war preemptively (though that's another story); had they, in short, been less successful as a party-building movement, they might never have gotten to hold the reins of power. Now, thanks to their own catastrophic success, to borrow a phrase, we can clean up their toxic influence on our democracy. Maybe we won't succeed, but for the first time in a long time, we can succeed, not just at putting the crooks out of business, but at bankrupting the ideology that fueled the crimes. Yes, we can.

Tony Zirkle is an Indiana Republican lawyer seeking his party's nomination toA "Mainstream" Republican Addresses His Base represent South Bend in Congress. He says he's a mainstream Republican, running in a historically Republican district in a historically Republican state. But the odds are still stacked against him: His primary opponent is Chris "Count" Chocola, the district's former Congressman attempting to win back his seat from Democrat Joe Donnelly. That must be why he made the decidedly unorthodox move of showing up at a neo-Nazi gala event to celebrate Hitler's birthday.

I'll say this for Zirkle. That's one of the more innovative ways I've heard of for a cash-strapped underdog campaign to generate free media. And it gave local reporters in South Bend the chance to cover something other than Charlie Weis' lawsuit against the doctors who performed his gastric bypass surgery. Like any modern politician, Zirkle understands the importance of message control. So rather than let the story get way ahead of him, Zirkle spoke with Fox News to make sure voters knew that he's not some fringe figure.

For example, Zirkle doesn't deny the Holocaust. Or, rather, Zirkle doesn't deny a Holocaust:

The personal-injury lawyer says he’s running for Congress to combat "the genocide of the white race" that pornography is causing — an "unholy pornocaust" against white Christian women.

"We now have a small army of male black porn stars that are sifting through five, ten, fifteen thousand women," he said. "One man can now genocide the wombs of thousands of women," infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases that leave them barren.

He calls it "Porn mule womb slaughter... the most effective weapon of mass destruction."...

Porn mules abuse women's body temples to the maximum degree, infect virtually every single one with at least the HPV, genocidally kill their wombs in a matter of years, and render them all but lifetime unmarriageable in a day.

In case you had to be told, yes, the Jews are the puppet-masters behind the Pornocaust. Zirkle has it from no less an authority than Hitler that "Jews comprised 98% of all pimps in Germany," and therefore he is justifiably concerned about "Jewish involvement in porn which was almost a cartel until recently."

Now, even though saving white women from genocide at the hands (if you will) of black cock is what inspired Zirkle to get into politics, he's hardly a one-issue candidate. A trip to his campaign website reveals a varied, nuanced platform. If elected, Zirkle will:

• Address the scourge of drugs by getting to its root cause --- "the ever increasing prevalence of the porn-prostitution industry"
• Put an end to child pornography by enlisting "thousands of 'private attorney generals' [sic]" to "investigate, subpoena and civilly forfeit the proceeds and assets of the child porn industry on their own time" (yes, that means commissioning an amateur army to use against Americans)
• Encourage states to use "police powers" against women seeking abortions
• Punish child-support dodgers by conscripting them into the army (this falls under the "immigration" heading on the website)
  
• Bring jobs to Indiana by doing "what Socrates would do and cease promoting to our children examples of murder, adultery and vice...If a man has nothing more to live for than a few moments in a strip bar or an occasional prostitute, how much will he care about his job?"
• Protect Indiana from the "judocracy" [s/b "jew-docracy"?--ed.], i.e., the conspiracy of judges trying to enshrine a right to "homosexual sodomy"
• Cut through all the gridlock and bullshit on war on terror issues to pose the seldom-asked question, "Is it possible that a nation's embracing of porn-prostitution is one of the root causes of modern-day terrorism?"
• Send the first constituent who correctly guesses the meaning of his middle name ("Hvfvgpd") a stashed copy of Penthouse Vol. I Issue 1 to "shred"
• Expand freedom of choice for women with "a 'Derrenger's [sic] for Dildos' policy to put guns in American women's hands instead of divorce aids"
• Promote inter-faith harmony between Christians and Muslims by helping them to "unite on anti-Semitism and use the Jews' involvement in porn-prostitution to incite the public"

And in case you needed any more reason to hop the next red-eye to South Bend to register as a Republican, get this: He was the valedictorian of Tipton High School, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. And ladies, he's single.

Newsweek interviews a former Republican campaign operative who went to jail for stifling democracy. Democracy in Action: Not Always MoralHe dishes on the dirty tricks of campaigns, such as telephoning voters and pretending to represent liberal causes while using "the voice of a quote-unquote 'scary black man.'"

Says the former operative: "When I was working, the main thing was to win, not to be moral."

Trying to get elected: exactly like trying to pick up a one night stand!

I watched a few minutes of the Republican primary debate today (I couldn't handle more than a few minutes), and happened to stumble upon the following question for all the candidates (slight paraphrase): "In 30 seconds, could you say whether the rich, the middle class, or the poor, are paying a disproportionate amount in taxes, and why?

Mike Huckabee's answer (again, slight paraphrase): "I propose a Fair Tax system --- because it won't make the rich poor, but it just might help make the poor rich."

Really, what can one say? Even making the (completely speculative and probably false) assumption that shifting to a national sales tax would be revenue neutral, by what mechanism could Huckabee imagine that poor people, simply by paying taxes against consumption rather than income, would be propelled into greater wealth? By magic?

Such a combination of a fantastical sermon-on-the-mount inversion and an embarrassing lack of rudimentary comprehension of economics and public policy is more or less a distillation of Huckabee down to his essence. His candidacy is premised on reveling in knowing absolutely nothing, except that all things are possible in the Lord. Want to lower taxes, drastically increase social spending, balance the budget, simultaneously throw out all the Mexican illegal immigrants and give their kids financial aid, reduce energy consumption to zero (note: this would presumably end our obesity problem as it would require us to starve to death), craft a foreign policy both Tom Friedman and Frank Gaffney would approve of? No problem, it can all be done if you believe by virtue of the absurd.

Ross Douthat has gotten a lot of traffic for this post, presenting the lottery paradox that is the Republican primary this year. (The lottery paradox: you believe of each ticket that it's a loser, but also that one of them is a winner.)

And for most of the candidates, it's true --- they're bound to lose. Romney can't win because evangelicals can't stomach Mormonism, and he was a moderate technocrat who was to Ted Kennedy's left on abortion until last week (incidentally, that's why I'll vote for him if it's Romney vs. Clinton). McCain can't win because he's against torture, for sane immigration policy, and for campaign finance reform (I'm with him on two of the three --- I'll let you guess where I disagree) --- each of them potential disqualifiers in a Republican primary, all three of them together effectively ruling him out. Giuliani can't win because, when you run a city the size of New York as if it's your personal fiefdom, criminal corruption becomes part of the job description. Thompson can't win because because he doesn't want to be running.

But Huckabee --- Huckabee can win, pace Ross. What are his downsides? Here are Stephen Bainbridge's reasons for opposing the Huckster:

1. He’s a wowser [Oz slang for someone who gets a kick out of denying pleasure to others]...

2. He’s a religious bigot...

3. He sounds pretty homophobic...

4. Speaking of respect for life, Huckabee supports the death penalty...

5. Speaking of hardened criminals, is Wayne Dumond Huckabee’s Willie Horton?...

6. He’s clueless on foreign policy...

7. Huckabee’s a serial tax hiker...

8. He’s probably a closet economic populist....

Those are all reasons I won't vote for Huckabee. In a Republican primary, #1-#4 are definite assets, #6-#8 have to do with knowledge of policy that voters don't have and will never base their decisions on, and #5, while embarrassing, doesn't play into a narrative of Huckabee as a wimpy liberal (and so isn't his Willie Horton). In other words, in the Republican primary, Huckabee's many, many bugs are features.

He's hardly a lock, but if Huckabee trips up, it won't be because he's running an amateurish and faith-based policy shop. Quite the contrary. You'll often hear pundits express frustration with the fact that candidates won't provide specifics to flesh out their proposals. This is a misplaced frustration since 1) nothing a presidential candidate proposes during a campaign will be enacted in its campaign form and 2) nobody besides pundits and a tiny, extremely educated sliver of the electorate bases his or her voting preferences on finely (or even coarsely) grained policy distinctions. At best, what happens is something like: "Well, Candidate X is for improved education, health care, border security, victory in the war. I'm for all those things. He's got my vote." More pessimistically, if Philip Converse was right, voters don't base their decisions on policy positions at all.

The one obstacle for Huckabee that may prove insuperable is that the GOP establishment really doesn't like him. (Mitt Romney was a guest on Hannity & Colmes tonight, and Hannity took the opportunity to ask Romney what he thought of Huckabee's Dukakis-style furlough programs.) I don't get the hostility. In so many ways, Huckabee is Bush's prodigal son.

UPDATE: Okay, this is a real problem for Huckabee. 

That airport restroom is now a tourist attraction:

The Minneapolis airport toilet where US senator Larry Craig was arrested for allegedly soliciting gay sex is now attracting tourists, say airport staff.

"People are taking pictures," Karen Evans, an information officer at Minneapolis-St Paul international airport, told Associated Press. [...]

"We had to just stop and check out the bathroom," said Sally Westby of Minneapolis, on her way to Guatemala with her husband Jon. "In fact, it's Jon's second time - he was here last week already." 

Royal Zino, who works at the shoeshine shop next to the public lavatory, said "it's been crazy". "People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door."

Always nice to see a public servant busting a nut to put their state on the map. If I were Sally Westby, though, I'd have some searching questions for my husband.

The best thing that could happen to evangelical Christianity -- not to mention orthodox Judaism or, deo volente, radical Islam -- would be the arrival of an ironical and winning antagonist of evolution. Listening to the faithful grow ever more insecure, make a complete hash of science, and furiously try to Brillo away the color and brilliance of 300 years of Enlightenment thinking, has got me wishing that some charismatic rabbi, the one from Northern Exposure, say, will infilitrate the op-ed pages and cable news channels to argue from wit as much from design.

Instead, what we get are photos of serene beachscapes, turning foliage, righteous white noise read as wisdom, and essays like this one from Sen. Sam Brownback:

It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

A theory developed according to the scientific method has no philosophical presupposition; philosophy follows from the aggregration of determined fact. Steven Pinker may say that evolutionary psychology is actually an uplifting explanation for human behavior, but he'd be a bad scientist if it were not uplifting and for that reason alone he discounted it as an explanation.

Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.

Reason says that human beings are conceived through sexual intercourse and birthed after about a 9-month gestation period in the womb of a post-pubescent female. Faith says a winged apparition descended from the sky and implanted a human fetus inside the virgin womb of a bronze age Jewess. Here's what the word "supplement" means:

1 a : something that completes or makes an addition b : DIETARY SUPPLEMENT
2 : a part added to or issued as a continuation of a book or periodical to correct errors or make additions
3 : an angle or arc that when added to a given angle or arc equals 180°

I need a vitamin supplement after this graph:

While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order.

The number one film at the box office this weekend is likely to be about how man is repeatedly an accident, brought on by alcohol, low inhibitions and even lower feminine standards. And Brownback has enough physiological attributes in common with a Silverback gorilla that even the most fanciful definition of "likeness" cannot disqualify them.

From a 1996 Houston Chronicle article: 

Under the headline of "Terrorist Update," for instance, Paul reported on gang crime in Los Angeles and commented, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

Paul, a Republican obstetrician from Surfside, said Wednesday he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time."

Selected writings by Paul were distributed Wednesday by the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Austin lawyer Charles "Lefty" Morris.

Morris said many of Paul's views are "out there on the fringe" and that his commentaries will be judged by voters in the November general elections.

Paul said allegations about his writings amounted to name-calling by the Democrats and that his opponents should focus instead on how to shrink government spending and reform welfare.

Morris and Paul are seeking the 14th Congressional District seat held by Greg Laughlin of West Columbia. Laughlin lost the Republican primary to Paul, a former congressman and the Libertarian Party's 1988 presidential candidate.

Paul, writing in his independent political newsletter in 1992, reported about unspecified surveys of blacks.

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,"Paul wrote.

Paul continued that politically sensible blacks are outnumbered "as decent people." Citing reports that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia are arrested, Paul wrote:

"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," Paul said.

Paul also wrote that although "we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."

Also, there's some unfriendly bits about Asians and this:

Stating that lobbying groups who seek special favors and handouts are evil, Paul wrote, "By far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government" and that the goal of the Zionist movement is to stifle criticism.

Evil--not just cynical or corrupt or anti-constitutional?

I can't wait for damage control on this one: the Cato Institute-sponsored photo op at Katz's Deli, the all-smiles fly-fishing weekends with Edgar Bronfman in the Catskills, etc., etc.

It isn't everyday one finds Bill Kristol quoting Faulkner. Santayana seems more the Weekly Standard editor's style, especially with respect to the famous apercu about history coming back around to bite you on your uninformed beak. Still, he sees the past as present as future in Fred Thompson, the big ole slab of condemned Tennessee veal who's heir to... Ronald Reagan?

In the two weeks since the Thompson boomlet began, many times I've heard conservative friends consider Thompson's merits (which are real) and then--chuckling, but almost dispositively--add, "The last time we nominated an actor, it didn't turn out badly."

And the New York Observer says one way to get out the vote is to stay home and tune in: 

Most of Mr. Thompson’s acting roles have played like slickly produced Presidential auditions: the tough-but-fair military man, the tough-but-fair F.B.I. agent, the tough-but-fair prosecutor—even a President. Law & Order, in which Thompson plays a conservative Southerner who somehow managed to get elected Manhattan D.A., has functioned as an hour-long campaign commercial beamed into the nation’s collective cerebral cortex for the past five years. “More people will watch Fred Thompson on Law & Order next week than will vote in both parties’ [super] primaries on Feb. 5 next year,” Mr. Galen said.

Sam Waterston is too Eugene McCarthy. 

Babe In The CityThe National Jewish Democratic Council is asking for the removal of Indianapolis Republican Mayoral candidate Bob Parker from the Mayoral race for this comment:

"I personally see Israel going into Iran and Syria in the next couple of months," he said. "I'm sure you realize -- well, most people don't -- millionaire Democrats outnumber millionaire Republicans four to one. It's mainly because of the Jewish faction inside the Democratic Party. Most Jewish people are Democrats and they bring that wealth. My opinion is, if Israel would go into Iran, Democrats will follow that cause. I really do believe that," he is quoted as saying.

There are Klingons in the White House. Representative David Wu (D-Oregon) says so.

Makes you wonder what they're smoking in Oregon these days. Or at least, who's writing their speeches.

That Britney's ousting of K-Fed and America's ousting of the Republican party occurred on the same day felt serendipitous, to say the least. But Mark Faletti at Punkassblog thinks the connection runs a little deeper than that:

When I said that Britney Spears was the living embodiment of the American zeitgeist, I was joking. But I didn’t think it was funny because it was true.

Sure, her first big break came in 1993, the same year Clinton took office. Okay, 1998/1999 were her happiest years, much like America’s. Yes, in 2000, she tried to play the girl/woman and virgin/whore as America played with the uniter/divider. Yeah, she released “Crossroads” at the same time Bush began lying about WMDs. And I admit it seemed a little odd that she shackled herself to Federline and dumped her manager of ten years in the second half of 2004, right when the country re-upped Bush in one of the greatest election day mistakes in US history.

America and Britney became eye-averting trainwrecks together, but I wasn’t serious about their connection. Until now.

Two days ago, Britney Spears kicked K-Fed’s ass to the curb. And she did it via a humilating, well-deserved kick to the nuts: by sending him a text message. Similarly, America filed for divorce from the Republican Congress with a humiliating, well-deserved kick to the nuts: by taking custody of not one, but both Houses.

All good points. But they raise one big question: where--or what--is America's leaked sex tape?

In a column published yesterday, Slate's Jacob Weisberg characterizes this congressional election's nearly-unprecedented campaign shit-slinging as a "specifically conservative contribution." Republican candidates are running attack ads insinuating, or in some cases outright declaring, that Democrats are homosexual, pedophillic, flag-burning, drug-abusing, sex fiends -- and hippie peaceniks, too!

It's just so unfair, Weisberg laments throughout his piece, predictably rehashing just about every other tedious article written in the midst of an electoral season in which everyone pines for an illusory yesteryear when campaign ads were, apparently, edifying Bill Moyer documentaries.

Weisberg takes the media ritual a bit further by actually blaming it all on the other team; his observations seem less that of a detached pundit than of a man suddenly worried about losing a game he assumed he'd won (this isn't insight; it's bad sportsmanship).

How else to explain the absurd claim that the contemporary attack ad's origin stretches back only to the 1988 Willie Horton ad run against Michael Dukakis. Try 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Peace, Little Girl," equated a vote for GOP candidate Barry Goldwater with dropping a nuclear bomb on a beautiful, blond, wide-eyed toddler. In comparison, a pedophillic, flag-burner isn't that bad.

Viciousness isn't the issue; it's certainty and conviction -- two things Republicans do better than Democrats these days.

For the last two decades, starting with Jimmy Carter onward, the American political narrative has been primarily framed in neoliberal terms. Age of big government is over, market versus state control, globalization and so on. Democrats and Republicans were basically on the same ship.

Bush, in his first year in office, seemed amenable to the narrative. Then September 11 happened. A major inflection point can be pinpointed with Bush's national security statement delivered in 2002 which outlined 3 guiding principle: 1) there are universal values -- liberty, democracy, the free market -- that should be universal for the whole planet (though the values happen to be American 2) Preemption, and 3)America is an empire and better start acting like it (bold military hegemony, etc.).

This was a bold document that turned the neoliberal narrative on its head. No less a neoliberal bastion than Business Week editorialized after the statement that the new direction may be harmful to the global economy by damaging the international community that would invariably feel threatened by such American unilateralism and arrogance. Some people see this moment as marking Bush's departure from neoliberalism to neoconservatism -- they see a pre-and-a-post-9/11 Bush.

That would be a simple reading. From the beginning, Bush and his policies have not fit neatly into any ideological box. His first act was No Child Left Behind, which marked a degree of federal involvement in education unmatched in American history. Onto an expansion of medicare, the interagency council on homelessness (which is a far more inventive program to combat homelessness than anything produced by the Clinton administration), his limits on late term abortion, the institution of marriage, granting religious institutions an increased role, the patriot act. This was a bold assertion of federal powers for conservative ends (a bit of an oxymoron, really).

What's interesting is that while this usage of the state is almost unprecedented going back to FDR, the bushies have stayed strictly away from articulating anything remotely close to a big government ideology. Why? That’s the question. Karl Rove knows ideology and intellectual coherence don't win elections. Americans vote on personality. What Rove has successfully formulated is a politics of values, and more importantly, a politics of certainty (which, admittedly, has reached its vitriolic apotheosis in this election's campaign ads).

Whatever else he is, Bush is sure to convey certainty about where he's going and how he feels. For an unsettled and frightened population, religious and moral certitude coupled with a renewed nationalism is comforting -- ideological coherence be damned.

Can the Democrats create an alternative discourse to certainty besides Weisberg's "it's not fair!" lament? Right now, for the 10 percent of undecided voters who determine elections, even a false sense of security is better than an accurate--and nuanced--sense of reality (or for that matter, fairness).

Lets face it: the body politic is in need of some serious surgery, and now is no time to start complaining about the presence of a little blood.

It's obvious by now that John Kerry was trying, in his gorilla-on-ice-skates sort of way, to have a crack at the president's poor academic performance and further trying to tie the executive IQ to the "quagmire" in Iraq. He was not mocking U.S. servicemen and servicewomen as morons. However, listening to Kerry's plodding and inarticulate delivery, it's easy to see what the fuss has been about. I don't know what's worse: That the RNC, which has been at its absolute nastiest this election year, is purposefully misleading voters and troops with low enough morale that the junior senator from Massachusetts is as presumptuous, elitist and out-of-touch as he looks... or that Kerry is all of those things but is paying for it for the wrong reason.

I should include myself in the list of bungling misinterpreters, as anyone who read yesterday's Today's Jewcy can attest. My apologies.