Conservatives are suffering from a political variety of "battered spouse" syndrome.  Like a wife who has been subjected to years of emotional abuse by a loutish husband, we are so eager to avoid being yelled at by the GOP's new Poohbahs, that we're starting to fall in line.

Question:  Of the three remaining contenders for the Presidency, which one:
1.  Favors closing Gitmo;

2.  Favors giving Al Qaeda detainees full access to our legal system, including access to classified material to be used against them;

3.  Wants to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens;

4.  Believes that Justice Alito is "too conservative";

5.  Has a close advisor, Warren Rudman, who is responsible for Bush 41's disastrous appointment of Justice Souter;

6.  Has admitted that he has a weak grasp of basic economics;

7.  Regularly votes against his own party to "cross the aisle" and "work with" members of the opposition;

All three qualify on 1-4, but 5-8 belong exclusively to "our" nominee:  "John McCain."

So, if you hate yourself, and you want to see conservatism permanently rebranded as "liberalism lite," by all means vote for the 71-year-old cancer survivor with anger management issues (and who calls Asians "gooks").

It seems that every day, another "conservative" pundit pops up like one of those "Whack-A-Moles" at Chuck E. Cheese's and spews some variant of the following (in between popping up and then ducking back down again):  "Only . . . an . . . idiot/traitor/liberal . . . would . . . refuse . . . to . . . vote . . . for . . .  John . . . McCain . . . and . . . if . . . Hillary! . . . or . . . Obama . . . gets . . . elected . . . it . . . will . . . be . . . your . . . fault . . ."

And darn it, they always duck down before I can whack 'em with that poofy mallet!

Take a minute to let that sink in. 

The base is upset, and rightly so, but we are told to meekly submit to our new masters, as they sit at the 19th hole unwinding after a long day of living off of their trust funds.  The country club, blue blood types are in charge now.  Rockefeller is in.  Reagan is out.

1.  Conservatism vs. Republicanism:  These are not the same; in fact, today they are very nearly opposites.  Conservatives stand for liberty, which means small government, low taxes, and minimal governmental intrusion.  The GOP has used the natural conservatism of the American people to gain power, and then outspend the Democrats.  With George W. Bush having rebranded (and in fact maligned) conservatism by adding the insulting and redundant "compassionate" modifer, conservatism is already on life support.  By supporting a RINO like McCain, you will be contributing to its death.

No, I don't.  If he wants my vote, he can ask for it.  His last word on this subject was that he would not "pander" for conservative votes.

a.  No, he won't.  Why would he?  He's not a conservative.  If I were President, I wouldn't appoint liberals.  Why then would "our" centrist-leaning-liberal nominee appoint conservatives?  That just makes no sense.  In addition, one of his chief advisors--as already mentioned--is Warren Rudman, who duped Bush 41 into appointing David Souter.  By all accounts, Bush was actually trying to appoint someone who was at least slightly conservative.  Anyone think Souter is the slightest bit conservative.  In addition, also as already mentioned, McCain thinks that Alito is too conservative.

b.  Even if it tried to get a conservative through the Supreme Court, how hard do you think he would pressure the majority Democrats in the Senate (his "good friends," in the words of "our" nominee) to approve a judge in the mold of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or (gasp!) Alito.  Zero.  Zilch.  Zippo.  No chance at all.

No, it won't.  It will be McCain's fault for not attracting enough support.  Go away.

 (Let's see if those crossover Dems and moderates who earned McCain "our" nomination will support him in November.  If you believe that, I've got some Bear-Sterns stock I'd like to sell you . . . cheap!)

In closing, I say once again that if you hate yourself, and want to see Reagan conservatism dead and buried, then vote for John McCain!  (Hey, that could be his new campaign slogan!  "Reagan's Dead!  Let's Bury Him!  Vote McCain!)

After all, with McCain, you get Hillary!’s charm and Barack’s modesty wrapped up in a cranky, bitter, condescending, 71-year-old, melanoma ridden package!

Yeah, great.  Sign me up. 

Now, I'm not going to follow the advice of my beloved St. Ann of Coultershire and pull the lever for Hillary! in November; nor do I recommend that any conservative do so. 

I do however IMPLORE my fellow conservatives not to buy the tired old "but other side is so much worse" line.

The sad truth is that, while a Clinton or (more likely) Obama presidency could well be "Jimmy Carter bad," it's the GOP's fault for letting it get this far.  We voted for Bush 41 (the quintessential "Rockefeller Republican") in 1988--and for Bush 43 twice (at least I did), despite some strong misgivings.  We did it because we bought that argument, and thought that things might actually get better if we just "went along."

Well, things didn't get better.  After seven years of Bush II, conservatism has lost the GOP and is in the process of being redefined.

So, here's the question you need to ask yourself:  "Am I first and foremost a conservative or a Republican?"  If you're a Republican first, then vote for the closet liberal with the "R" after his name. 

If you're a conservative, let the GOP see if they can win the White House without you.  If they can, then they were right; they really DON'T need us.  If they can't, we get another chance to bring true conservatism back to life.

That's our only shot; it's all we've got left.  We have let the GOP become the party of big government. To use the “12-Step” parlance, we have “enabled” them.

All "law" has an author. I see only three possibilities, but feel free to enlighten me if I have missed something.

First, some believe that the ultimate source of law is God. This group includes serious adherents of all theistic faiths, as well as most Deists. As a Christian, this is what I believe.

Second, there is the “consensus” camp, which holds that law is simply a convention that emerges via a cultural consensus among reasonable people.

Third, law can be regarded as a kind of outgrowth of evolutionary psychology.  That is, morality and law along with human beings.

Of these three, only the first is logically tenable.  (That doesn’t mean it’s true, necessarily, but it does mean that the other two are false.)

If that’s still not clear enough, think about the moral basis on which a “consensus” person (which I’m guessing is where you fit in) would condemn the Holocaust.  Why is it wrong to kill millions of people. Seriously. Why is it wrong? The Nazis thought they were doing good. The Allies killed millions of people in WWII.  Are we the same as Nazis? After all, we were all killers.  What’s the difference?

Before you start with “Well, the victims of the Holocaust were innocent,” what about the 12-year-old German “Pfadfinder” (Boy Scouts) who were forced to fight for the Nazis at the end of the war? Weren’t they “innocent,” too?

Still another example. I’m assuming that you condemn the Islamofascists who attacked us on 9/11.  Why? Weren’t they just expressing their “voices” in protesting the decadence and evil of the American “Great Satan”? (What’s scary is that a lot of people actually believe this.  Such moral idiocy is where the consensus argument ultimately leads.)

The “evolutionary” argument falls pray to much the same criticism.  If different people evolve differently, then aren’t there different standards of morality.  In fact, the Nazis used something very much like this to justify their superiority over the Jews, Christians, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped, physically handicapped, et al. whom they slaughtered during the Holocaust. So this approach also fails to explain rationally why murder is wrong.

The theist (especially the Christian) has an answer.  These things are wrong because they violate the law that God gave to us. The theist has a first principle: God. The atheist will not be satisfied with that, naturally, but it’s more than the atheist has.  The atheist must (ahem!) “borrow” from the theist, in order to justify his worldview.  This is why every officially atheist society always devolves into barbarism: there are no enforceable, universally recognized standards of conducts, so atheism inevitably becomes Hobbes’ war of all against all in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

God provides the basis for your morality, whether you are willing to acknowledge it or not.  That works fine as long as no one challenges you to justify what you believe, as I am doing.  So, please give it some thought. You are blessed to have a Christian wife, a union I find quite interesting and indeed emblematic in a way.  As atheists are always forced to rely on their oft-despised theist parents, friends, and neighbors for moral direction, so too does an atheist husband have an unappreciated “pipeline to divinity” in a Christian wife.  You’re lucky in that, and I pray that one of these Sundays you’ll give your wife the chance to show you something of how she sees the world from a “God’s eye” view.

Blessings to you and yours.

Best,

Norman

I'll do my best to give equally thoughtful answers, without (hopefully) being too gaseous. :-)

You ask: "Can atheist (sic) be just as moral as Christians?"

Absolutely. I have known some wonderful atheists, and some truly rotten Christians. Heck, some people think I'M a rotten Christian! :-)

As an only child in a basically secular household ("Sword of Light" is thinking "Aha, so THAT explains the 'chip'!"), I grew up surrounded by adults--some of the most decent atheists one could ever hope to meet. The key, though, is that they weren't "really" atheists, just as I suspect that you aren't "really" an atheist. (I intend no offense, and will explain my meaning.) Their conduct was guided by the standards and beliefs they internalized as children from their parents. This "moral osmosis" allowed them to lead often exemplary lives, and to be very decent people, without adopting their parents' religious worldview--or so they thought.

In fact, what they believed to be their own man-made, ethical code was essentially that of their religious parents--just without the religious part.

So far, so good. Decent people, wonderful lives. No God taking up valuable weekend hours and making them feel guilty all the time. Sounds great, no?

The trouble is that their moral code had no foundation. None. To put this in the egghead terms I used as a professor, they had the "praxis" (roughly, "habit") but had lost the "arche" (the root or basis). They knew what to do, but could not provide a rational justification for it. 

So, a person without a divinely-oriented worldview can be very decent person, but can't pass it on very well. "Dad, WHY should I refrain from cheating/work hard/not sleep around/show mercy to others/show generosity/be forgiving, etc.?" "Well, because it's the right thing to do." "Why?" "Er, um, well, I . . ."