Donatism is one of the oldest, most tempting of heresies. It posits that the spiritual value of a sacrament is in direct relation to the spiritual worthiness of the dispenser; in shortest form, a corrupt priest cannot give an effective sacrament. There is something intuitive -- which is not to say correct -- about this heresy, which of course makes it all the more dangerous. It is a heresy, its intuitive attraction notwithstanding, because it suggests that there are limitations on God's desire or ability to share the incredible spiritual gift that is a sacrament, and the one performing the sacrament is capable of effectively interposing some taint on God's gift by virtue of being the channel through which the sacrament is provided. Over fifteen hundred years later, we still owe St. Augustine thanks on our knees for sending that heresy screaming into the night, even if it does come back even more often than Gnosticism.

Put Donatism to the side for a moment. It'll be back. (It always is.)

Properly, but for a self-imposed and -enforced ban on commenting at RedState, this post would be a reply to this comment at RedState. The subject to which the commenter was responding was Barry Obama (just this once, I'll refrain from calling him Kitten) and his poll-tested decision to renounce, sorta, more or less, his pastor of twenty years, for that pastor's unfortunately unoriginal take on liberation theology. (More on that here.) As von isn't here to defend himself, I'll at least do him the courtesy of quoting his text in full:

I can't and won't ask anyone else to subscribe to this view.

Having backed McCain for years, and advocated for him in these virtual pages, I intend to vote for Senator McCain. Why accept Cleon or Nicias when Pericles is available?* Yet, I have always found Obama's comments on race & Wright (the two are inseparable) sincere. He has repeatedly arose above an impossible situation. You can quibble with Obama's speech in Philadelphia, but the fact that one can only raise honest quibbles with such a serious subject is testimony enough to Obama's insights.

I respect that my view may not be widely held on this site. That's fine: I never was a particularly good Republican. Still, I want this written down -- even if, in this decadent age, writing consists of electrons pausing between states:

Barack Obama is a good man. He doesn't deserve this.

von

*Hi, Pretentiousness? Thy namesake is in my tagline (special expanded version; all that is good about western civilization is in the Funeral Oration):

If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the better for it? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; thus our city is equally admirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful in our tastes and our strength lies, in our opinion, not in deliberation and discussion, but that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

No, Barack Obama is not a good man, and he does deserve this -- this being public scrutiny and ridicule for the ills with which he has associated himself. But that's two different things, albeit ones related at some level, so let's unpack them.

Now, in point of fact, I would offer that Senator Obama is a bad man. He is a bad man because on perhaps the simplest, basic test for common humanity -- the willingness to stop others from slaughtering mewling infants -- he fails. He proudly fails. On an issue that does not remotely touch on whether a woman's right to maintain control over her body is more important than her child's right to continue living -- that is, on the simple question of what happens to an infant who escapes the birth canal alive after a failed abortion -- it is Barack Obama's position that the law should turn its eyes away as the mother is delivered of her right to a dead child. Good men do not partake in that kind of barbarity. Good men do not treat a sobbing infant's right to life as conditional, or as a matter of mere politics. Good men -- indeed, men of even mediocre decency -- stand and say The least among us deserves his next breath as much as the greatest, and when given the chance to affirm it in law, do so unhesitatingly.

Senator Obama may or may not believe that the statement is true, but he explicitly refused to enshrine it in law. For that, he is a bad man.

But put that to the side.

Good men do not stand quietly by while scandal is performed before their eyes. Ordinary men of common decency might remain silent in the face of a leader -- a political leader, a spiritual leader, what have you -- portraying evil as good, and setting moral ills forth as morally neutral or morally good acts; you would expect that of an ordinary human, because to do otherwise is to risk shame, and excommunication, and a host of ills that rational, selfish men have no desire to inflict as pain on themselves. The lesson of every demagogue's rise, every tyrant's grasp of power, every flock led astray by an unhinged priest, is that the overwhelming majority of men who might otherwise object, who might cry out This is not right in fact remain silent, and even acquiesce, because there are terrible consequences for a social animal to reject the way of the herd.

I presume -- an abundance of evidence to the contrary -- that Senator Obama does not believe that America is damned for its collective sins, and does not believe that the American government and its (white) population continue to perform acts of extraordinary depravity (and, in the creation of the AIDS virus, magic) on its black population. I do not despise Barack Obama for being a social animal, or for being a man who is -- let us be honest here about the best possible interpretation -- too weak to reject the views of those whom he loves and befriends, from his wife to his preacher to his friends to his political allies, because in that way, he is very ordinary. Expecting heroism -- or, if you prefer, goodness -- out of men is a losing proposition on almost every level possible, and it is perversely easier to expect when the only danger is to a man's life and well-being, as opposed to his social standing. Funny world.

But good men do not sit idly by while malice and evil are taught as moral goods. Taking Senator Obama on the most generous, most reasonable possible interpretation -- that he sat, for two decades, in the pews of the church he has frequently lauded as his spiritual home, with his two young daughters -- then he has not, in fact, been a good man. He has been a small man, a mediocre man, an ordinary man. Good men do not sit idly by while evil prospers.

About twelve years ago, I was attending Mass at the church near my family's house, while I was home from college on summer vacation. The Pastor was expounding on the Gospel, trying manfully to tie it together with the First and Second Readings in a way he hadn't before, when out of nowhere, he began discussing abortion. We weren't talking about the little children, or millstones, or the rock on which I build, or anything even remotely related (if memory serves, Christ had fed the masses with bread and fish); instead, out of nowhere, this otherwise pleasant Dominican launches into what he clearly believes is a reasoned discussion on the licitness of abortion. No big deal, except he then goes on to offer that there's nothing in Catholic teaching that forbids procuring or inducing an abortion, and that there's a lot of misinformation out there. From there, it's off into a discussion about how we don't really know that an embryo (he used the words zygote, fetus, and embryo interchangeably; I've simply settled on the middle stage for this recitation) is human, so performing or procuring an abortion exists in that moral gray area in which the Church teaches that the informed conscience leads.

So I got up and walked out. I was four rows from the front, a couple of spaces in, and I left. I didn't say anything, though I drew looks. I didn't think I was doing anything heroic, because I wasn't; I simply refused, publicly, to be part of scandal. I never went back. I don't think anyone else got up.

I'm not a good man; in fact, I think I'm a pretty despicable, low, contemptible man. My act was almost certainly made easier by the fact that I had only an intermittent relationship with that Parish, and so had no real ties to break when I left. But I couldn't simply sit there and give tacit assent to a very, very bad thing.

Barry Obama never got up and left -- or more accurately, he claims he's now more or less, sort of, gotten up and left, but when it mattered, when he could have quietly refused to be part of something demonstrably wrong, he remained silent, and simply sat there. That doesn't make him a bad man; it makes him an ordinary man.

Before I go any farther, let's talk about Donatism. I'm Catholic: It is the teaching of my Church that one priest is as capable of ministering the sacraments as the next, because of the office and Order invested in them by God. (An Orthodox priest in one of the Churches in the line of Apostolic Succession is similarly empowered.) Thus, while I might prefer one parish over another, because of convenience, the presence of a cry-room, the style of the liturgy, the blessed absence of banjos, what have you, there is no greater and no lesser value to any Catholic Church I might attend.

I say all of that because I don't understand the concept of a personal, spiritual relationship with one's pastor. It literally makes no sense to me. I understand the idea of a priest as spiritual companion and to a very limited (but usually overstated) extent, intermediary; I understand the idea of a priest's words, or teaching, or example, being so important that it brings one to, or closer to, the Risen Christ. But I don't understand the idea of having one's spiritual identity so tied up in a priest's teaching that divorcing yourself from the priest is tantamount to, if not synonymous with, divorcing oneself from one's spiritual identity. Yet this was Obama's defense, until it was no longer politically expedient: I could no sooner repudiate this man than I could repudiate my left leg.

And that is Donatism. It is an explicit union between a mortal and the delivery of God's grace. And it is another sign that, at best, Barack Obama is not a good man, but an ordinary, weak one. The Change That We Have Been Hoping For is incapable of effecting the very least change imaginable to protect his daughters from venom; the only evil that can be repudiated is that of Republicans.

So don't tell me that Barack Obama is a good man. Good men are rare, incredible treasures.

And even good men deserve the consequences of their actions.

Or has not the good Senator tied himself to his pastor, in his published works, in his public image, in his speeches until the last? Has he not gone out of his way to associate with the man, and made his faith a cornerstone of his public person?

And has he not run for the Presidency of the United States, a contact sport where bean bag is not even in the exercise routine? Does he not sleep in cheap motels, eat indifferent and greasy food, sneak quiet cigarette breaks where possible, shake thousands of hands, and ritually avoid hard questions from reporters, all in the pursuit of the most powerful office in the world?

Barack Obama has pledged his health, some portion of his wealth, and years of his life grasping for near-ultimate power. He deserves scrutiny, because he wants that power badly enough to do serious damage to his life and the lives of those close to him. That last is extraordinary only relative to the general population; almost every other human to run for the Presidency does so. However, that simply means that they're all borderline insane, and they deserve the probing their psyches receive, for fear of what else lurks under that incredible ambition.

So the attempt to decouple a man's actions from their consequences -- a coupling vital to our laws, our ideas of right and wrong, the very fabric of our society -- is not merely wrong, it is insulting to the men who would trace effect to those consequences, and the good man who set them in motion.

So don't tell me that a man who has bent the last two years in a run for the Presidency of the United States, who would allow newborn children to die in trash cans, who sat silent for two decades as incredible venom was hurled at the pews in which he sat, does not deserve the consequences of his actions.

Tell me instead whether anyone can experience the consequences of their acts, if this man cannot.

FOR HE IS RISEN.

Don’t be surprised if many of the young people enthusiastically supporting Paul today wind up crossing the line in a general election and using some of that enthusiasm in support of Obama. I’m sure there are many who gravitate to Paul because of individual issues or out of anger against the establishment. Those followers will drift to third-parties or sit out the election altogether. But there are more, like me, who gravitate to him because of his faith in personal freedom and in the fundamental belief in the human spirit such conviction implies. Obama may not satisfy our thirst for liberty, but he certainly appeals to the human spirit.

A mighty fortress is Obama,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper he amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.

I am blessed to be standing in the city where my own extraordinary journey began. A few miles from here, in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant, is where I learned what it takes to make change happen.

I was a young organizer then, intent on fighting joblessness and poverty on the South Side, and I still remember one of the very first meetings I put together. We had worked on it for days, but no one showed up. Our volunteers felt so defeated, they wanted to quit. And to be honest, so did I.

But at that moment, I looked outside and saw some young boys tossing stones at a boarded-up apartment building across the street. They were like boys in so many cities across the country - boys without prospects, without guidance, without hope. And I turned to the volunteers, and I asked them, "Before you quit, I want you to answer one question. What will happen to those boys?" And the volunteers looked out that window, and they decided that night to keep going - to keep organizing, keep fighting for better schools, and better jobs, and better health care. And so did I. And slowly, but surely, in the weeks and months to come, the community began to change.

Through many dangers, toils and snares...
we have already come.
T'was Barack that brought us safe thus far...
and Barack will lead us home.

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have little; who've been told that they cannot have what they dream; that they cannot be what they imagine.

Yes they can.

We are the hope of the father who goes to work before dawn and lies awake with doubts that tell him he cannot give his children the same opportunities that someone gave him.

Yes he can.

We are the hope of the woman who hears that her city will not be rebuilt; that she cannot reclaim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm.

Yes she can.

We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided; that we cannot come together; that we cannot remake this world as it should be.

Because we know what we have seen and what we believe - that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored; that will not be deterred; that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest - Yes. We. Can.

Just one touch and He makes me whole,
Speaks sweet peace to my sin sick soul,
At His feet all my burdens roll,
Cured by the Healer divine.

That is who we are. That is the Party that we need to be, and can be, if we cast off our doubts, and leave behind our fears, and choose the America that we know is possible. Because there is a moment in the life of every generation, if it is to make its mark on history, when its spirit has to come through, when it must choose the future over the past, when it must make its own change from the bottom up.

This is our moment. This is our message - the same message we had when we were up, and when we were down. The same message that we will carry all the way to the convention. And in seven months time - right here in Denver - we can realize this promise; we can claim this legacy; we can choose new leadership for America. Because there is nothing we cannot do if the American people decide it is time.

So I run to Obama
Please help me Obama
Don't you see me prayin'
Don't you see me down here prayin'

I ask you to take this second path - this harder path - not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

I ask you to take it because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on our collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.

When Barack's folk was in Red State land
Let my people go!
Disenfranchised so they couldn't stand
Let my people go!

I've now listened to and read dozens of his speeches, on television and in person and in print. Tonight was, in my judgment, the best. He was able to frame the attacks on him as a reason to vote for him. He was able to frame his foes as the status quo - beyond the Clintons or the Bushes, Democrats or Republicans. He was able to cast his candidacy as a rebuke to the Balkanization of the American public, a response to the abuse of religion for political purposes, a repudiation of the cynicism that makes all political commentary a function of horse-races and spin. It was an appeal to Democrats, Republicans and Independents to say goodbye to all that. It was a burial of Rove and Morris. And it was better than his previous speeches because he kept bringing it back to policy specifics, to the economy and healthcare and, movingly, to this misbegotten war. The diverse coalition he has assembled - including an ornery small-government conservative like me - is a reflection of the future of this country, its potential and its irreplaceable, dynamic cultural and social mix.

This is the America we all love. He is showing us how to find it again. That's leadership.

And, yes. We can.

Go, tell it on the mountain!
Over the hills and everywhere!
Go, tell it on the mountain!
That Barack Obama is born!

It is extremely disturbing to hear, not that Obama admires Reagan, but why he does so. Reagan was not a sunny optimist pushing dynamic entrepreneurship, but a savvy politician using a civil rights backlash to catapult conservatives to power. Lots of people don't agree with this, of course, since it doesn't fit a coherent narrative of GOP ascendancy. Masking Reagan's true political underpinning principles is a central goal of the conservative movement, with someone as powerful as Grover Norquist seeking to put Reagan's name on as many monuments as possible and the Republican candidates themselves using Reagan's name instead of George Bush's in GOP debates as a mark of greatness. Why would the conservative movement create such idolatry around Reagan? Is is because they just want to honor a great man? Perhaps that is some of it. Or are they trying to escape the legacy of the conservative movement so that it can be rebuilt in a few years, as they did after Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I?

I don't know. But if you think, as Obama does, that Reagan's rise to power was premised on a sunny optimism in contrast to an out of control government and a society rife with liberal excess, then you don't understand the conservative movement. Reagan tapped into greed and fear and tribalism, and those are powerful forces. Ignoring that isn't going to make them go away.

Obama, Obama, lama sabachthani?!

When I was at RedState, there were only three bloggers who I felt should never have been given posting privileges of any sort, for different reasons. Each was a Josh Trevino addition -- but let me be absolutely clear about something here: So was I. (Er, that doesn't make anything better.) Let me try it this way: Josh scores so many hits, you'd expect a few misses along with them. Moreover, given that his intent in his part of the creation of the site was to create a broad coalition of center-right writers, you have to give him credit for actually following through, even though the results were uneven.

One, Sebastian Holsclaw, left after the changeover from the Scoop platform to the Drupal model RedState is getting ready to abandon. Sebastian's problem, as far as I was concerned, was that he was so out of touch with the community as a whole that his posts were like dropping a snare drum solo into a performance of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Bright fella, nice guy (from what I could see), decent-but-not-great writer, but just really out of step with the other writers and commenters.

The second, Charles Bird, still writes there. Frankly, I'm leery of sharing too many of my thoughts about him given his reaction to my departure, but that reaction is illustrative of two parts of the problem: Charles is and was a plodding, dim, extraordinarily conventional thinker, and his writing reflects it; but aside from comforting me that I wasn't the least capable talent on the front page of RedState, there's not much wrong with that. Bird's issues are two-fold, but inextricably intertwined: (1) Charles's blogging belongs first and foremost to that left-wing moron factory, Obsidian Wings, and it shows not only in his I-don't-expect-intelligent-reply style (and that he can't be bothered to change the hyperlinks in his work to redirect to his work on RedState), but also in the essential thrust of the work, which tends to be explicative to, for, and from the perspective of center-lefters. (2) Charles is more naturally comfortable with the Left, partially out of reflexive ideological sympathy, and partially out of the absence of two functioning prefrontal lobes; this in turn is why Charles has spent more than his share of time on his home site (the moron factory) taking shots at RedState. (I wasn't the one to whom he gave his cherry, if you catch my drift.) That post-semicolon part was the biggest reason I wanted him gone; sadly, as with my efforts to ban the (other) below-I.Q. 100 commenters at RedState, I was as much a miserable failure as Charles's teachers from kindergarten on.

(Yes, that's "not sharing too many of my thoughts.")

But I'm not here to address Sebastian or Bird. Instead, this is about John Cole.

A good friend of mine forwarded this a while back with the notation, "Pot, Meet Kettle." There's no point in excerpting it or commenting on it -- by now, anyone familiar with how John has degenerated will be able to sing along with it by knowing that he's upset with The Dread Rises for obsessiveness -- except to say that it's what prompted me to write this.

Flash back a loooong way. H.D. Miller -- remember him, anyone? Traveling Shoes? (H.D. has taken that blog private.) -- turned me on to him back in 2002 or 2003. Professor Miller would doubtless qualify as a wingnut in Cole's current lexicography, but back then, during an email exchange, he told me I should check out Cole's work.

I got a kick out of it. It was a fun read, he clearly didn't like my political priorities, but he clearly didn't like a lot of others', and he used to turn the odd good phrase. I was tickled when I found out I'd get to write with him at RedState, about two years later.

Now, this may surprise those of you whose experience with Cole is from mid-2006 on, but at one time, John was a fairly critical thinker. He pretty much always considered me a theocrat in waiting -- which isn't fair, I'm a monarchist if I'm anything -- but he was pretty up-front that (1) if I didn't bother him about it, he wouldn't bother me about it, and (2) that notwithstanding, common ground could make common fronts possible.

So: I recognize that abortion is murder, as is dehydrating one's wife to death; he thinks people should be free to commit these kinds of murder. Fair enough. At one time -- back before he voted for, and endorsed, Alan Mollohan and Bob Byrd -- we could agree that the growth of the Federal government is, ceteris paribus, a bad thing, and that efforts should be made to stop this. Of course, at one time, he wasn't actively opposed to winning in Iraq, either.

The critical issue, though, wasn't whether he and I agreed, so much as that you could tell he'd thought things through before he wrote, at least a large percentage of the time. Here in blog-land, that's a fairly rare event.

(Dark, funny secret: One of my posts that most set off the orangutans who inhabit the American Left was actually a composite work of the then-RedState crew, including, probably most heavily but for yours truly, John as the foremost contributor. Hint: Think late-summer 2005, and "yard ape.")

What's particularly hard about all this is that John is now just one more lefty. I can read the few bright lefties out there and think, Hm, maybe I don't agree, but that is a good insight, or even, Ya know, I think I agree with that. It says something that there is now nothing interesting about Cole except his on-again, off-again fascination with RedState. Basically, he's turned his site into a group-blog, slightly-wider-ranging version of B. Fred State.

John left around the same time Sebastian did -- sadly, Charles chose to stay after the switchover, and curiously, continued to post to the front through all of the 2006 and 2007, even though he now claims his work was purely in the diaries -- which more or less dovetailed with when I was agitating for him to leave. (There was no connection between my attempts and his voluntary parting.) The common theme for the three was that all spent a fair amount of their time shooting at RedState from their home blogs, only to turn up at RedState and pretend nothing had happened. At the founding of RedState, the operating principle was that only what's done on the site matters as to fronting privileges; however, I took that to mean that political positions taken elsewhere were not taken into account. Maybe it had changed two years later, and maybe it hadn't; maybe I was right, and maybe I was wrong. Regardless, it says something about a man if he'll tell one public audience something awful about you, then pretend in front of another public audience that there's nothing amiss.

Why did John go nuts? I dunno. I sometimes think it's ObiWi disease; sometimes, I think John's meds have failed; yet other times, I suspect he's simply grown senile.

For whatever reason, there's really no intellectual or substantive difference between anything he writes and the sort of pedestrian work you can find any time Markos Moulitsas writes for his page, or what the intellectual pin-cushions at Obsidian Wings spew at theirs. He's become an indistinguishable howl in the crowd, and I don't think his broken principles, such as they were, sting him any more.

Damned shame, really.

Dear Idiot Supporters of Ron Paul:

Ha.

Ha.

If you can't even place higher than any of the Republican candidates who bothered to campaign in New Hampshire, it's time to consider that maybe, just maybe, you're not wanted in polite company.

Toss off, you Nazi sympathizers. You're well gone from my Party.

Never any of the best,

Thomas H. Crown

People, people, nominal people: You're not paying attention.

To the morons at ObiWi: Keep them coming, and keep it classy.

UPDATE: I'm apparently using words a tad too large for the neo-Nazis who infest Ron Paul's support base. Look, with moderated comments, in a sense, all comments become for my amusement; I only publish them if I think they'll specially amuse me. Your comments never appear unless I let them. Get it?

FURTHER UPDATE: Apparently, 80% of my troll traffic lately comes from Ron Paul sites. Obsidian Wings has something bigger to stew on (and my sincere condolences). An inordinate number of the comments I've recently come from a fellow I banned at RedState for having problems with Mexicans. If he wants to keep wasting his time, he's welcome to it.

A farewell from a midget.

Worry not, hilzoy: I hold you in just about as much respect as you hold me. What brought us together? This:

This is not the only time that Thomas has committed the sin of presumption by claiming to know God's will not just in general cases -- e.g., His disapproval of murder or idolatry -- but in specifics as well.

Your ability -- demonstrated time and again -- to reason from the general to the specific (not to mention your honesty about it!) has brought Mohammed to the Mountain. Well done, hon.

UPDATE: I love you too, Charles. I'm impressed that you shared this with the folks at Obsidian Wings, where because of Moe, few of us ever went, rather than, say, in an email to me.

If you ever want to say that to my face, you know where to find me.

This was originally posted at RedState as Just a drop of water in an endless sea. I was going to leave it there, and only there, but given the warm reception that Nazi-coddler's acolytes have given it, I really don't have much choice but to put it up here, too.

Oh, and Lonewacko: Lying doesn't help your case, even when it's more sophistry than an outright lie.

I thought about calling this And thanks for all the fish, but that's been done. I confess to being tempted with The Wrath of the Valheru, but only because it's the coolest phrase in English ever. I also thought about The Bad Wolf, but that would be lost on the non-geeky.

So, I'm leaving.

Traditionally, diaries such as these tend to focus on how awful everyone's been to the diarist; how the blogosphere is a great, teeming mass of unfairness that stalks the land like a great, teeming, unfair, massive thing; and they tend to be interesting only from an anthropological perspective. We've been blessed with relatively few of even the truly interesting type -- the great kowalski's numerous successes in defying convention notwithstanding -- so I'm hoping this one will at least do all the budding archaeology majors a service.

One last time, please, read on.

I've been with RedState since just before it went live, and it's been one helluva ride. In honor of that ride, there are some things I need to get out there.

First and foremost, whenever someone leaves, there's the inevitable Why? followed by the even more inevitable I know the real reason. This isn't helped when the person leaving is coy about the rationale, as some have been, so let me put the record straight, right hand raised, left hand on the keyboard, gripping hand on the Bible.

I'm so tired. That's pretty much it. I don't mean this to be a Waah, waah, woe is me moment -- if what follows doesn't make clear how enjoyable all this has been, nothing will -- but it really does take a lot of effort to make this nominal hobby work, and balancing that against a job that eats, and has always eaten, a lot of my time, and an ever-growing brood, is a balancing act without easy parallel. Moreover, it has been driven home to me by everyone's decision to focus on the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination, forsaking Congress and local government, that my voice carries a lot less weight than it once did -- a good thing, I stress, because that means the community has several hundred minds of its own, but a tiring thing, nevertheless.

I have lost a few friendships as a result of my work here, including one that I treasured, of someone I admire and respect (and rather like) to this day. I'm by nature a fairly darkly cynical fellow, and the occasional cheerleading that is needed for good Party efforts has become harder of late.

I am, until the end of this diary, a Director of this site, and I am honored to be one; but my chair is a rotating one, and it will soon be filled by another. My production on the site has become limited to behind-the-scenes work, some nasty troll-killing, and the odd bit of meta-site work to keep the comments and diaries from getting out of control. In other words, my real value to the site has plunged to very close to
nil.

And, I must confess, I no longer take the great joy in troll-killing that I once did. It's a short, grim smile, where before I'd have a grin that would last whole minutes.

The intra-site bloodfest that has been the 2008 primaries has been ... hard. No matter what someone says about your preferred candidate -- or their own voting tendencies -- it would have been nice if most folks had remembered that we're gonna wake up next to each other the morning after the primaries, and that we can't do that thing where we awkwardly pause before mumbling something, grab the keys, and never making eye contact, hurry out the door. Basically, it's been like having a year of Schiavo and Miers all bundled up into one big lovefest that never ends: Obsessive ranting and spinning and condemnation among folks who normally share politics, conversation, and hobbies is enough to drive anyone who cares about this site bonkers.

I have the option to remain a Contributor and moderator; but I don't do halfsies.

Because the seat is rotating, this is probably the best possible time to hang up my holster, smile, softly sing A Wanderin' Star, and leave.

So, that's why. Nothing romantic, nothing special, just being ready for a break at the right time.

That leads to thanks where due.

First, I owe Ben, Mike, and Josh a sincere thanks for bringing me on board as the least talented, affirmative-action Cajun Editor three and a half years ago; and an even deeper thanks for opening the toolkit to me, while I was making fun of Mike's shirt, no less.

Second, I owe Ben, Erick, Clayton, and Mike, a thanks for this turn at being a Director. It was worth the wait, guys.

Third, I owe my fellow Contributors a hearty round of thanks for putting up with, befriending, and offering encouragement and jibes to me when I needed both. I'm privileged to have been part of such a wonderful group, and don't ever think I don't know it.

Fourth, I owe every diarist and commenter whom I haven't banned (permanently) a sincere round of thanks for the good arguments, the repartee, and Tbone's Cajun jokes. Actually, that last leads to an important point: A lot of the smiles, laughs, and happy cackles of determination I've experienced these last three years are due in no small part to all of the wonderful members of the community that have made their online home here. Naming Tbone doesn't take away from the hundreds of others whose words I've treasured; I could name them all day, and still not finish.

Fifth, I want to take a moment to thank Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Duncan Black, Oliver Willis, the whole crew at Obsidian Wings, and the writers of any other far-left wing moron factory I've inadvertantly omitted, for sending us the waves of cretins who've, between them, managed to make target practice a sport for the whole family again. A special thanks for MKS, acupuncture-boy.

Sixth, Rachel: Thank you for sending me one email that kept me going when I thought I shouldn't. And congratulations again.

Now, a few remaining administrative notes.

First: I have withheld any statement of support for any GOP Presidential candidate because it seemed like bad idea, as a Director of the site, to make such an endorsement, and -- God, how I've waited to say this -- because the whole damned lot can go to Hell. What an incompetent mass of horse rear-flesh bound up in what, on paper, is one of the most talented groups the GOP has ever had. I could go on, but the full thing is in my concurrently posted piece, And the horses you all rode in on, one at a time, then rotate.

Second, Lonewacko Blog, if you're reading this -- and based on your obsessively repeated tirade across half the blogosphere and Wikipedia, you are: I banned you, you dirty little racist. I banned you for being a racist, and for showing us that you are a racist. I did not ban you for criticizing George W. Bush, in no small part because where you disagreed with him, I have publicly disagreed with him, you diseased piece of rhinoceros pizzle; I banned you because you decided to share your problems with brown people on this site.

Speaking of whining, puling little men without chests: Dear Adam Bonin: You pathetic excuse for a mockup of a pigtailed little girl. You were banned because you were an obnoxious ass who liked to drop off-topic bank shots into comments whenever you didn't like the way a thread was going; because you lacked more than infrequent courtesy in how you treated a place that doesn't resemble the asylum you call your community home; and because whenever you felt threatened, you went running for Mommy and Daddy as loudly as you could. Your weaselly attempt to frame (I used a word with which you're familiar to bring this back into the realm of the comprehensible for you) your banning to any and all who would listen is replete with a priori conceptual, logical, and, best of all, factual errors on a nearly unparalleled scale. The next time you want to whine about getting a richly deserved punishment, save yourself the embarrassment of making up new facts you like, and just cry into the hindquarters of a baboon at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Speaking of little girls: To Matt Stoller: One day, you're going to learn that there are consequences to pathetically seeking friendship from people offline, then knifing them in the kidneys online, not least of which is that when those pictures of you and the obese, naked clowns come to light, there's no one there to defend you. I will come out of retirement the day that happens, Stinky, to pee on the burial site of your reputation.

Third: Oh, how I've longed to say this -- to the astroturfing advance scouts of certain political campaigns, many of whom alternate between singlehandedly driving the collective IQ of the site from above 100 to just above 1, and to suddenly turning out pieces that magically change writing styles and abilities: I hope your conscience lets you sleep well at night, because were I the little angel on your shoulder, I'd be trying out an Ogre Battle style halo shot on your skull nightly.

Fourth, because no one else will say this: Mitt Romney belongs to a cult. Not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; that's no cult. His freaking political campaign is a cult, and I could have been one of his supporters but for the cult he founded. A pox on everyone formally associated with the campaign, and indeed, everyone ever formally associated with that cult.

Fifth: Guys, when commenting, please hit preview. Please.

Sixth: To all the banned Ron Paul supporters who've filled my inbox lately: Go worship your Nazi-coddler in the privacy of your own home, and stop wasting my Party's time with it. Oh, and **** Ron Paul.

Final, random notes:

These will be the last words I ever write at RedState. I can say that with 99% certainty, because I'm a horrible sucker for nostalgia. I sometimes, on long road trips, pass the old Publix where my wife and I shopped for the first couple of years after we married, and I tear up and start choking just driving into that parking lot. Dropping three-point-five years of commitment into a website means that if I don't want to bawl like an Adam Bonin, I need to stay away.

I've transferred my best content to my old site, now three and change years quiescent. I may write there again; I may not. I'd say comments are welcome -- and they are -- but I can't get any commenting service, neither Blogspot's, nor a third-party's service, to function there, and I'm too cheap to spring for private hosting.

The email address on the contact form is going to go inactive right after I hit "Submit" on this diary, so don't use that if you want to get in touch. My old blog has my current email address on the left bar.

I have five regrets, in total, one of which, no one knows but yours truly. One is known to three people, and can be guessed by about four more. One is known to every Contributor, each of whom is sworn to secrecy. Aside from those, I regret not being able to see RedState 3.0 -- you guys have no idea the work that's going into that. It's gonna rock. The fifth, and most poignant regret, is that I never had the chance to properly beg Ramesh Ponnuru to write something for the site. National Review may have slipped a peg on the old respectability scale, but not because of any work of Ramesh's. The man is one of my heroes, and this regret stings.

There's so much more, but I don't want to make this diary any longer than it already is. Thanks again, folks: It really has been an adventure. So:

I don't know half of you as well as I should like, and like less than half of you as well as you deserve.

Always all the best, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year,

Thomas H. Crown

This was originally posted at RedState -- my penultimate work there -- under the title And the horses you all rode in on, one at a time, then rotate. Interestingly, it produced one of the more insightful ... er, make that the insightful comment I've read at Daily Kos here.

You all have no idea how long I've wanted to write this. For the reasons set forth in my next diary, I can, and am; but I've been saving this up for a while. Pardon the spleen.

Dear Senators Thompson and McCain; Governors Romney and Huckabee; and Mayor Giuliani: You all suck.

Read on to see why. Or don't; I figure only two of you are smart enough to care why a conservative, Mass-going Catholic would personally drive the buggy to take you all to Hell.

Before I go any further, to any outraged supporters of any of these candidates: Toss it. So many of you have spent so much time shilling for your preferred choices, you've lost track of first principles. I have no time for far too many of you, and those of you with the brainpower to actually merit notice have picked the wrong company in which to travel.

Let's start with my favorite: Mayor Rudolph "Voting for Me is Material Cooperation with Evil" Giuliani. I owe you a sincere and hearty congratulations: You have taken what should have been a commanding lead in the primaries and run it into the ground through a combination of provincialism (you're a New Yorker, I guess I shouldn't expect any better), leftism on social principles, and the sort of rare political sophistication that comes from thinking that because you've faced down what New York has to offer, you are entitled to support. But what you've really done -- where you've truly shined -- is offered Republican voters a lesson in why not to vote for a liberal Catholic, a lesson they heretofore always thought could be summarized as "because he's a Democrat." Bravo, cretin.

The problem, at base, is two-fold: Part One: Your policy positions and natural inclinations would have left you a Democrat anywhere but New York City or San Francisco. Being honest with yourself is the first step on the road to recovery: Admit it. Deal with it. Move on. You are not a fiscal conservative (hint: fiscal conservatives do not adore the progressive tax structure). You are not a social conservative (oh, you are not a social conservative). You are not a small-government conservative (never, ever that). What you are is some guy who decided he didn't like crime and disorder. Bad news, buckaroo: This isn't the 1970s. 'Round these parts, even Democrats figured out -- heck, even the Clintons figured out -- that criminals are bad people years before anyone called you anything but "challenged by a combover."

You're a Democrat running for the Republican nomination. Admit it -- yell it to the Heavens -- and move on.

The second part is related. You are a liberal Catholic. I know, I know, my identification of this disqualifies everything I say hereafter; that's why you're not one of the two candidates smart enough to understand that there's a problem.

The problem with liberal Catholics is a flip of the problem with conservative Catholics who seek ecclesiastical support for their every preferred policy position: Instead of trying to stick a square peg in a round hole, as the latter do, the former insist that the peg is really round, and that it's their right to change the entire structure of everything in Creation to fit their preferred outcomes. This is a problematic attitude to hold in a Church that teaches that things simply are sometimes, and it's a horrible attitude to carry into trying to be the national standard bearer for an American political party.

Now, Republicans know that to run a campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination in the post-Reagan era, one must do at least minimal obeisance to the three pillars of modern Republicanism: Strong national defense, fiscal conservatism, and social conservatism. We also know that we have to speak in optimistic, glowing terms about the American Republic, because it really is the best nation on God's green Earth, and people would like to be reminded every so often; and following from that, our national candidate must speak of national beliefs and goals.

As a liberal Catholic Democrat with a bad tendency to provincialism, you have spent your entire campaign going on about the "two legs" of the Republican platform, omitting social conservatism, and your entire campaign has been spent talking about New York. You have tried to insist that the peg is really round, refusing to even speak of its angles, and you have run with the sort of provincialism that kills a political campaign. I know New Yorkers are convinced that they are uniquely qualified to be God because of where they live; and I know that you are convinced as a theological matter that everything should bend before you; but grow the Hell up.

We are a coalition defined by conservatism of every manner and method. We expect our only national candidate to at least sorta pretend or at least kinda project a vague belief in all the kinds of conservatism, of which, bad news, Mayor, social conservatism is a vital part. What we require is so damned minimal it's not funny: We don't ask that you support executing abortionists, that you tattoo gay men with bar codes, that Federal marshals enforce Bible study time in public schools: We ask that you support the right of the people to choose socially conservative practices for themselves, or not. But because you're a Democrat (and a liberal Catholic), you just can't swallow that, can ya?

I personally know very smart people who have advised your campaign on how to avoid all of the problems your social policy preferences would yield, and because the freaking peg is round, their advice wasn't given the time of day. That worked out well, huh?

Relatedly, there's the whole "busted family" thing. One of the critical insights Republicans have offered is that a private life is suggestive of how a public life will work. It's something a lot of people instinctively understand. Now, your personal life is, let's put this delicately, FUBAR; but your decision not to deal with it early in the campaign is, as near as I can discern, not a function of dengue-fever level stupidity, but rather an insistence that the world reorder itself to you. That, too, has worked out pretty well.

The net result is that you have paved the way for Mitt Romney (below) to slide to the nomination, and to drag us all to the bottom of the ocean against Queen Thickankles. Oh, and if you somehow get the nomination, you'll break the Party in twain. Wonderful. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

Now, for Governor Willard "Mitt" "Astroturf" Romney: God, what a waste you are. You know, I actually could have supported you, and have toyed with it. You seem like a nice, competent fellow. Were you like this the whole time, I'd have been with you from day one. Somewhere in there is a real human being, with real fire in his belly, and I would be proud to call that man "Mr. President."

Unfortunately, that guy's not running. Instead, we have Al Gore's anima infused in a Ken Doll, and gifted with actual business sense. You're clearly smarting from your Dad's self-destruction all those years ago -- an understandable impulse -- and so you've decided to be all things to all Republicans, and to run your political campaign like a modern business enterprise. Bad idea.

Our own Dan McLaughlin has extensively covered the numerous reasons you'd give us heartburn (here, here, here, here, and here), and on those counts, I don't think there's any point in repeating, less eloquently, what he's said. Instead, I'm going to tell you why a lot of grassroots Republicans want nothing to do with you, and it has nothing to do with you being Mormon.

Stephen Green, or perhaps Jonah Goldberg, noted that watching you campaign is like being asked, What do I have to do to put you in this BMW today? I think that's emblematic of the way your campaign has been run, and it's why those of us who pay attention to these things (and those of us who, unlike I, actually have the ability to influence opinion, have turned off on you) want nothing to do with the cult you've founded.

You sent astroturfers out into the blogging world, as bloggers, commenters, and, here, diarists. On its face, this sounds like a good business practice: Build demand and awareness for the product, then unleash the product. In real life, this is stupid. Like the fake websites that some PR companies set up for large corporations, anyone who's actually paying attention sniffs these things out in short order, and then you end up with egg on your face.

Your campaign is run like a cult-of-personality version of Amway. I don't want to steal anyone's thunder here, but let's just say it's possible to criticize your policy positions or record without caring what your religious beliefs are; it is, however, impossible to criticize your policy positions or record without being called a bigot, or having your livelihood threatened. (Oh, and Stephen, if you're reading this: You're part of the problem.) I loathe everyone and everything associated with your campaign, and by extension, this means I have to hope to Almighty God you don't take the nomination, because I know you will not only die in the general, you will do enormous collateral damage in your death-throes.

You lie about your record and your past. Don't do that. That's Al Gore's way of dealing with a disappointed father. I understand that this is an attempt to rebrand the product, but you aren't [bleep]ing Coca-Cola: We don't care about New Coke, we care that you pretend that public funding of abortions is taking a pro-life stance.

And yet, we're probably stuck with you, because of the incredible incompetence of your opponents. On the Wonder Years, an otherwise awful and highly forgettable show, the narrator once noted that his parents faced a conundrum when deciding how to decorate the kitchen. Dad would insist on some tile he liked. Mom would insist on some tile she liked. They'd compromise on some tile no one in our species liked.

You are that tile, Mitt. You are the "Eh," Candidate. Congratulations.

Now, for an old nemesis: St. John the McCain. Man, you just never got it. You were, by rights, the front-runner. You had your shot in 2000, missed, said and did most (but, critically, not all) of the right things, and you lined up for your coronation. But you never really internalized that there is a difference between saying what a reporter thinks is a good thing, and saying what the average Republican voter thinks is a good thing. I would say this is merely a form of error, but repeated over the course of eight years, I'm forced to conclude that it's actually a form of powerful stupidity. This sucks, because I think you're our best chance to beat the Hildebeest.

Think it through: Does the average Republican voter like that you helped form a compromise on judges that left some very good judges out in the cold? Does the average Republican voter like restrictions on his political speech near election time? Does the average Republican voter like that you've all but accused American soldiers of torturing others? Does the average Republican voter like that you side with the Democrats on global warming? Does the average Republican voter like that you've all but called anyone who disagrees with your immigration stance a bigot? If you've answered any of these questions (or, apparently, all of these questions) "Yes," then I'd respectfully submit that you deserve the drubbing you're about to get.

You're going, I'll bet, to win New Hampshire, thereby proving once and for all that New Hampshire Republicans aren't. And after that, you're going to go down in flames, helping The Chief Astroturfer take the rest of us down. You're going to do this because you've so enjoyed playing up the maverick part of "maverick Republican" that you've neglected to show Republican voters that you're actually much more Republican than maverick. Instead, these last seven years, instead of publicly mending bridges burned in 2000, you have Schumered to every camera you could find whenever you wanted to share your latest deviation from the Republican Party. As a way to get free press, it beats everything but public human sacrifice to Moloch. As a way to win the Republican nomination for President of the United States, it's up there with public human sacrifice to Moloch. (And, as you at one point endorsed worship of Moloch for scientific purposes, you already lost that portion of the base that understands the allusion.)

That you're clearly nuts isn't the problem; I don't know that we'd mind a nutter for the Presidency. The problem is that, to paraphrase a wag at the Washington Post Online seven years ago, you keep alienating a key constituency in the Republican Party: Republicans. Put differently: The general election happens second. You have to win the primaries first.

I really think you could have squared the circle and made everyone understand what you brought to the table; but history is sometimes prologue, and for you, it's every damned chapter.

Now, for the second coming of Huey Long: Governor Huckabee. I'd like to congratulate you on getting a core component of the Republican base to forget one of the most vital lessons of modern American politics: Never vote for the governor of Arkansas for anything. Now, as Texan, and son of Louisiana, I have to confess I'm perhaps disproportionately amazed at this feat, as we get to see you and yours on an unfortunately consistent basis. But credit where due: You're offering a lot of my fellow conservatives a cyanide pill, and they're begging for the chance to swallow it.

Your problems are two-fold, and in a sense, it's not fair for me to criticize you: You've only been on the radar for a little while, and haven't had the chance to lie yourself into a pretzel the way Mitt Romney has.

But, let's just get them out there: Your foreign policy instincts smell like Matt Stoller. I don't care what your positions are: You can, if you somehow miraculously secure funding, hire gurus to tell you what to think on each policy position; heck, hire a whole Potemkin Village of eminences grises for foreign policy, much as Giuliani has done for judges. Your instincts -- what you say off the cuff -- suggest to me that you should never be allowed near the big, shiny red button, and that you cannot be trusted not to Carter your way through foreign affairs.

The second problem -- and why I'm frightened you could win with enough funding -- is that I think real populism sells. The Democrats' immoral approach to human life and the social ills of our nation probably only buys them about a third of their general election support. Where they cash in is being massive redistributionists, and, as a son of Louisiana, I can see that healthy sparkle in your eyes. Combine an economically liberal approach to the world with social conservatism, and I think there's a guaran-damn-teed election winner right there.

And I'll go to my grave before I support you. Because even if that blood-marker Roe is overturned on your watch, I'll be fighting that war all over again in two decades. The growth of the welfare state and Federal power was a necessary precondition to Roe's dark birth. When you trust the government to tell you what rights you have and have not, it will give you whatever will keep you most passive. And dead children don't spark revolutions.

I stress that I don't doubt your pro-life bona fides in the slightest. I simply know as surely as I know the gray in my beard that your success would spell the death of the modern Republican Party, and that in turn would lead to the death of the Republic, together with those altars to Moloch I mentioned above.

No dice, preacher man.

And now, most painfully, we come to Fred! Ah, Senator Thompson. I say painfully because I would have loved to support you. Now I'm glad I didn't.

I have only two questions to ask.

(1) What the Hell is wrong with you?

(2) Why are you running some weird amalgam of Phil Gramm's and Bob Dole's 1996 campaigns?

Let's deal with the first. You had a ready, built-in, national base of support begging you to run. They waited. You waited. They waited. You announced and...

...let everyone decide you didn't want the job.

Now, before I go any farther: I think not wanting the job is a good thing. Part of what scares me about Mitt Romney, as with Al Gore, is that they have clearly wanted this job for basically their entire adult lives. That is unhealthy, and frightening. Bless you for not being unbalanced.

But the morons need to think you want the job, in no small part because they are morons. Humans, depressingly, want to be led. They want to think their leader wants to lead them. And unfortunately, far too many of these people watch the evening news, and vote in all sorts of elections where, were we a sane polity, we'd give them toy voting machines to use instead of allowing their votes to count. (All upside: Flashing lights and bells go off when they pull the lever, so they feel good, and their votes don't count, so we feel good.) And you have allowed the evening news to portray you as lazy and uninterested. You slept through the first debates after you entered.

Aphrodite's teeth and painted toenails, what is wrong with you? I mean, all of this bleeds into your campaign and how it's been run. (Second question segue.) Do you maybe remember that neither Gramm nor Dole won the Presidency, against one of the weakest Democrats to have the Presidency in a century? Your ideas and your positions are simply awesome. Your campaign is the weakest, most directionless, poorly organized thing you'll see outside of Ted Kennedy's bathroom every morning. Your run to the Presidency is not a coronation, and the media must be manipulated as any good campaign -- Hillary's, George W. Bush's, Ronald Reagan's, even the first Bill Clinton campaign -- does.

One of our Contributors, Bob Hahn, noted that how one runs a campaign tells you something about how the man at the head will run his Administration. (A better reason to stop Mitt Romney I can't imagine.) If this is true -- and the longer I think on it, I'm sure it is -- this is not only a searing indictment of every man running for the nomination from our side of the "v," it is a giant, glowing warning sign about your potential Presidency. We have had seven years of a Presidency that doesn't do message control. We don't need four more years of that.

In order words, with the last shreds of the respect I once had for you: You don't deserve to be on the stage with the other men, poor, sad, and wanting though they may be, because they did their homework. You have not.

You fail.

I could go on like this for days. I'd like to finish by noting where the fault for all this truly lies: In the voters. We allowed these men to think they had a chance. We encouraged them to be as weak and pathetic as they are, when on paper, we should be sitting in our best position in decades.

On our own heads shall be the results of the 2008 election. God have mercy on our souls, though we don't deserve it.

Just a quick note on comments:

When I was at RedState, I had to put up with a lot of sub-I.Q. 100 comments, and was limited in my ability to ban those commenters as the morons they were.

Here, I own the place. Your comments exist solely for my amusement. If you don't amuse me, I delete your comment.

In the last couple of days, following from a RedState link, I have received a handful of comments, some from RONPAUL!! supporters (one of whom was a RedState user I banned), and one from someone who simply didn't like me. These comments are no longer with us, because they didn't amuse me.

I know, I know, all of you really dedicated libertarian Ron Paul supporters check your belief in private property at the home page of any web site you visit; but I can, and will, delete your comments as fast as you can make them.

Amuse me, or don't bother.

Thanks in advance.

What you see below -- basically today's entire output -- is my best work (sad as that statement may be) from my time at RedState, beginning in the old days with RedState.org, carrying through to the for-profit RedState.com, and segueing into subdivision-of-Eagle-Publishing RedState.com. I've archived it here for reasons that will become clear in the next ten days, but also because the last time we ported over content on a platform switch, everything that predated the switch was archived and accessible only to moderators. I'm worried that everything will be archived and inaccessible this time, given the enormous resources Eagle is willing to pour into this project.

More to come.

Finally, my two favorite comments. The first was what I consider my best banning comment; I still smile when I think of it. The second taught me an important lesson: Most humans are extraordinarily stupid. For reasons lost on me, the words "the entire American Left" transformed in a lot of folks' minds into "people who voted for John Kerry (and sometimes their children and entire families)", "half the country," and/or "everyone." The first is merely stupid; the second is north of stupid; and the third is proof that a minimum IQ is not a prerequisite to participation on the Internet.

My dear brother Sardo Numsie!
by Thomas

Ah, MKS, I've been looking forward to this for a while.

You've been banned.

Why?

If I may employ an animal metaphor -- and I may -- your ends of conversations around here are like nothing so much as the repeated butting against a stone wall of a brain-damaged, spavined goat, unaware that he's not really doing any damage to the wall, bleeding out of the stumps of his horns, and not even understanding why he attacked the wall in the first place. Your writing suggests that you are the one hyena that decides to move from carrion to fresh prey in one fell swoop by leaping, snarling, between a lion and his fresh kill, only to wonder why your packmates aren't there right behind you.

For further clarity: It's not because of your noxious opinions, nor because you're a Kossack. This lady, though her opinions and her take on certain religious beliefs are so noxious as to actually produce nausea in me -- and I can eat a marinara and boudin pasta dish while watching a colonoscopy on the Discovery Channel -- is not in the targeting scope right now, because she has the good grace to act like a guest in someone else's home.

You, however, have come into our house and peed in the vase our beloved late aunt gave us, and now, simply, we must pour your water down your throat and smash Aunt LiuLiu's vase over your head.

It is because your every word is an insult to the proprietors of this site; to the editorship; to your fellow commenters; to the readership; to writers, readers, and speakers of English everywhere; to Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, and indeed, the line of Anglo-Saxon and English monks who helped guide a rather limited Germanic tongue into the incredibly fluid, fluent tool it is today; and, in all likelihood, to every one who tried to teach you grammar, spelling, logic, and/or manners from the day you were born to the present.

I suppose I owe you a litany of your mendacity, idiocy, and all too frequently a combination of the two:

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

And here.

Really, that's just a sampling from the last couple of days. (By the way, Griswold was decided in 1965, which is not, in fact, the early Sixties.) To get the full, crippling weight of the keen intellectual acumen you bring to bear every time you waste bandwidth here, you've really got to page through every one of your bons mots here.

The upside -- if we may stretch that word past its breaking point to encompass things other than the sheer joy of your exit -- to all of this is that it shouldn't be hard to replicate your, ahem, contributions to date at will. Simply splice together, at random, the words "Conservatives are evil," "Republicans hate America," "you Republicans want to put gays in jail," "I like me," and/or "you all want to ban birth control," along with some utterly turgid legal or logical analysis -- again, we're stretching the language here, so bear with me -- and any commenter on this site can fill what we laughably will call the void caused by your absence.

Kindly let the door hit you on the way out. And please don't waste our time coming back under a different name. Everything else to the side, writing styles are like fingerprints. It takes surprisingly little energy for us to ban you clean and forever if that's what's called for.

'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof!
One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope.
He hath a spite against me, that I know,
Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why?

Farepoorly.

-----------

I repeat: Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech. They are below human. I look forward to seeing each and every one in Hell.

To those conservatives who couldn't wait to find wrongdoing where none existed: Gee, funny you didn't get all hyped up about this with Bob Bork. Or Sam Alito. I guess maybe your common sense detector -- or decency reserve -- only kicks in when it gets you something you want?

You're all dead to me, as well. Too bad: One lady in particular was a favorite writer of mine. Ah, well.

This dates to September 18, 2005.

To the Republican Party:

I have been a Republican since 1980. I was 4.

Seriously. I’ll never forget the moment that I realized that the guy with the big, warm smile and the ready laugh was a better guy than the dopey looking guy debating him. (Says something that even a four year old could pick up on that.) Obviously, I couldn’t vote that year, but if I could have, the vote would have been easy.

I am a Republican because I am a conservative. I am a Republican because the Republican Party is the best modern vehicle for conservative ideas and values. I am, first and foremost, a Republican because the Republican Party holds, as one of its most elementary tenets, that human life deserves protection from the earliest stages. The Democrats do not believe this. They cannot, and will not, have my vote, so long as they deny the essential humanity and predicate rights of any group of humans. Period.

I am a Republican because ours is the only Party that remembered the value of human freedom when the Loyal Opposition and so much of the world were ready to consign billions to slavery.

I am also a Republican because the Republican Party is the Party of prudence; of understanding that there is a moral value inherent in caution; of understanding the limits of human endeavors; of spending only within our means; of easing the burden of government on Americans; and of knowing the danger of the words, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

A few noble exceptions to the side, there is a general consensus that we’ve forgotten that third set. We’ve forgotten that government as crutch is just as often government as shackle. We’ve forgotten that every time we dole out another million here, another billion there, we shackle men to the government’s yoke as surely as night follows day. We’ve forgotten that there is a moral good attached to spending only as much as we take in, and doing our damnedest to spend even less than that.

But because the Party still, nominally, holds to the first two points, you have me.

But because of the nomination of Harriet Miers, I must now add: Conditionally.

At one time, we took as self-evident that every dollar we give is another hook in some man's flesh -- indeed, it is a hook in many men's flesh, for it comes from taxpayers, and goes to taxpayers. It is a chain made pretty by a gloss of common humanity, but beneath that warm exterior is cold steel, and the chain's third end always, always leads back to the State. And so we have bled for Medicare, and for hurricane relief, and most of all, for the thousands of Congressional projects that tie men’s livelihood and wellbeing to the beneficence of the State. And that bleeding has latched the hook more deeply into the men and women on the second end of the chain, deeper into their flesh, promising blood in the future.

And at some point, the RSC notwithstanding, we stopped caring.

And I can accept that. That's one of the legs down, but I can accept that.

Oh, not happily. But I can accept it because I thought I understood what I was getting in trade: The end of Roe. For that, I would trade a lot -- I have traded a lot. I've made peace with the fact that Republican politicians like to get re-elected as much as Democrats do, which means that the budget goes Up Up Up! I've accepted the fact that no one has the spine to push even Bush's half-hearted Social Security proposals. I've accepted the fact that this White House sees money as power to be applied, not something to value for its own, or for prudence's sake, and the Congresscritters agree. I can accept that, as long as it means that the power is being used to achieve other ends.

I've eaten my own bile, and made peace with the fact that Arlen Specter is part of the caucus, for the same reason.

All pro-lifers have asked, lo these thirty years of blood, is for a chance to persuade. Before the Supreme Court invented a right to terminate unborn children, this issue, as with most contentious issues, was resolved through appeal and compromise and resignation on all sides. And that small, simple thing is what we have been promised all these years by the Republican Party, and it is a vital part of one of the legs of my support for this Party.

And yet, now, I see that leg bending, near the breaking point. And that's a problem, because you see, there are three reasons why I'm a Republican. Two can suffice. One is not enough. And as it happens, you, collectively, are systematically destroying the thickest leg of all.

The President has nominated Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court. We have no indication that she will overturn Roe, no indication that she has a single jurisprudential principle at all. Let us not put too fine a point on it: We have been betrayed. We must now hope and pray -- on scant evidence -- that Miers is a truly stealth Scalia, a woman who will overturn the edifice of Roe, a woman who will rise up with righteous fury at the mere mention of the words "an historic voyage of interpretation," when used in the same sentence with the word "Constitution."

A betrayal this surely is, for you have taken the single thing from us that we have worked all these years to achieve, and used it as a mere bauble to gather our votes, knowing that when the time came to meet your part of our pact, you would decline, promising us that it would be just a little longer. You have made us guess, and hope, and pray, that Miers is at least a shadow of the "judges in the mold of Scalia and Thomas" that we were promised. And Miers's nomination is merely the topper on a long line of smaller betrayals.

People of good faith can believe that this is a good nomination, or that the Party has earned enough credibility to take a leap of faith here. I do not. Let me be clear about something: I care precisely nothing about Miers's "qualifications." Everyone fighting over this, put your hands down, go to the back of the classroom, and wait to be called on. I don't care what school she went to, whether she was the Editor in Chief of Law Review (or any other publication), whether she was the Student Bar Association President, or whether she even has experience as judge. We're not discussing high energy particle physics here, folks. We are talking about determining how the laws of the United States are applied to discrete fact situations and, in rare instances, whether a law or legal act comports with the Constitution. Ms. Miers has a pulse, graduated from law school, and has written, on her very own, briefs longer than three pages. She was a partner in a very good firm with a very good litigation practice. I suspect she can IRAC with minimal effort. She'll do fine on the technicalities.

I care, however, that we know nothing about her – or at least, nothing that matters. The single most fundamental question is this: Does she have a coherent, concrete philosophy? If not, she will surely be a return to the bad old days of Sandy O’Connor, and we have no guarantee that she will not be buffeted by the egos around her, some of whom actually have theories of jurisprudence. (Justices Souter, Kennedy, and Stevens are therefore no danger to her, except insofar as they hang out at the nerd table in the cafeteria together.)

I have a friend who was a summer associate at Locke Liddell & Sapp right after the merger. His opinion of her -- concededly after only six weeks infrequently around her -- is that she was (and presumably is) a bright, personable, extremely capable litigator, more or less conservative, fairly Republican, and utterly uninterested in any of the landmarks that are now features of the Kulturkampf of the last forty years. If you listen carefully to what most folks in the Dallas and Texas Bars say about her, you'll get the same idea.

So I don't care that she's "right on life." John F'ing Kerry is "right on life." What I care about is whether Harriet Miers has a well-grounded judicial philosophy consistent with the proper interpretation of the Constitution; if she does, then Roe and the even more bizarre Casey will soon be relics of a darker time. There is, however, precious little to suggest that Miers will do more than bleat about how she's personally nauseated by abortion, but will uphold the "central holding" of Roe, and once again call the lumpen Volk to a glorious future of following. In other words, there must be a bulwark against the natural tendency of human beings to accrete power to themselves, a bulwark O'Connor and Kennedy sorely lack, and a bulwark that, to all appearances, Miers lacks.

So let us not forget the prime mover here: It was Bush who chanced breaking the base when the chance to change the Court for decades was finally at stake. But everyone aiming their spleen at Bush these days has forgotten something very important: He is the head of the Party, but he is not the Party. He is the President, not the President and Congress. He is not the group of Republicans pushing involuntary human experimentation, for expedience or moral deficiency or profit. He is a President who would like to have another Supreme Court Justice to his credit.

I certainly blame Bush for this. But I blame Rick Santorum, for loyally getting behind Arlen Specter and dooming us to one more RINO in the Senate, a limiting force on the President's ability to ever put Roe in jeopardy. I blame Bill Frist, who could not hold his caucus together well enough to put in place the structural conditions needed to fulfill the Party's promise to pro-lifers. I blame John McCain, and every Republican who was determined to hold their blessed extra-Constitutional privileges above all else when the filibuster was at issue, because you gotta know Bush took a look at the numbers when he made this pick.

Because you see, despite the apologia for the Deal, the truth was apparent from the start: The decision to keep the filibuster in place -- to preserve a privilege for the blowhards in the upper chamber -- was the death of our chance to break Roe. Oh, sure, they've now given their imprimatur to Miers. Wonderful. John McCain's ego must be cooing. And the pro-life movement is now suffering for it.

As I said at the time:

Mark me on this: We were just sold down the river. Because now, when a Supreme Court nominee who will demolish Roe, who will replace Sandy Windvane O'Connor, comes before the Senate, and Ted "Catholic for One Hour on Sundays Only" Kennedy begins his enactment of this much-hallowed, all-be-freaking-praised tradition, this group of losers will not say, "Well, the Democrats are in their right to filibuster here, because this nominee opposes Roe." Heavens no. That'll lose the stupid sheep who vote in the national primaries and upon whom they rely for millions of $20 and $30 donations. No, they'll say, "The Democrats are in their right here because this guy believes in natural law, and that's outside the mainstream," or "This lady opposes affirmative action, and that's outside the mainstream," or "She once wrote a law review article indicating that Congress's Interstate Commerce power is limited where four-trailer trucks are concerned," or somesuch nonsense. ...

To Hell with the war, the debt, the dollar, the deficit, hallowed Senate tradition, and everything else. Legalized abortion on demand just got another ten years of life. Ten million more dead for a Senate "tradition." Mark me on this.

Let us be clear on something here: Pro-lifers will not be to the GOP what Blacks inexplicably are to the Democrat Party. If the difference between you and the Democrat Party is the difference between being functionally pro-choice and being assertedly pro-choice; if you have, finally, abandoned even the pretense of believing in Reagan's principles; then voting for you is only slightly less than material cooperation with evil.

As a wiser Editor than I put it, we are in this pickle because you have played as much a role as the Democrats in allowing the consent of the governed to be supplanted by the dictates of nine unelected lawyers. Great issues are now fought through proxies on the Supreme Court, and you appear to have no desire to place even a passable knight on the field for us. You have sown the wind, ladies and gentlemen; now reap the whirlwind.

Therefore, here is where I stand, and where, I suggest, most pro-lifers and believers in Federalism will stand soon enough: We gave you a governing majority. We supported idiots over slightly more qualified idiots, we targeted decent politicians for defeat, we gave our time, talent, and treasure (I gave treasure I didn't have to Martinez's, Thune's, DeMint's, and Coburn's campaigns, for this very day), to hold that governing majority. From this side of things, it looks like you just spat in our eyes, patted us on the head, and went about business as usual.

No more. Not one more dime from me; not one more vote for a Republican who says great things about a culture of life but protects the culture of death, all the while spending like a Democrat; not one more knock on a door for a get-out-the-vote effort; not one more inch. Not until Harriet Miers joins John Roberts in overturning Roe. Oh, certainly, John McCain's primary run will be even more painful, if I have my way; but if he clears the primaries, precisely why should I vote for him? Or for any other Republican? Where is the material difference?

The answer, at this moment, appears to be There is none. And there is no reason to support them.

Prove me wrong, or lose any thoughts of my loyalty, and of any consistency in my voting.

Best regards,

Thomas Crown

cc:

Sen. Rick Santorum
Rep. Dennis Hastert
Sen. Tom Coburn
Sen. Jim DeMint
Sen. John Thune
Sen. Mel Martinez

This dates to April 1, 2005. It includes additions by good friends, that I include because I'm afraid of how much material will be lost when RedState gets its next makeover.

One of the giants of the twentieth century is dead.

Karol Wojtyla was a man of salt and light, who took the Gospel message throughout the world, even to nations that opposed his very existence. He fought against the culture of death as an eloquent spokesman for the unique value of every human life. He was a suffering servant for Mankind, with his eyes always on heaven and earth at the same time.

I will speak as a Catholic first, as a conservative second.

He embodied the faith. That might sound grandiose, but it is not. He spoke of the things of heaven and earth interchangeably and yet in their proper spheres. He stood time and again for the weakest among us, and reminded us that we have duties to them beyond mere lip service. He called evil by its right name, but reminded us that evil is parasitic on good; that evil is merely separation from God, and that all that will right itself through the power of Christ in the end.

While never giving in to a distortion of the Gospel, he reminded us that Christianity carries with it a radical preference for the poor. No fan of communism, and never enthralled by socialism, yet never opposed to capitalism, he nevertheless reminded us that capitalism is not inherently good, and frequently produces unjust results. He reminded us that our portion in this world is charity.

He fought the willful slaughter of millions of defenseless children as surely as he fought the murder of the aged and infirm. He was called tyrant, murderer, oppressor, theocrat, and words a thousand times worse, but he never once yielded to anger in their face. He was called a reactionary by those opposed to him, even as he built and expanded on the infallible theology of Vatican II. He was accused of misunderstanding human sexuality while he developed the most fluent theological doctrine on the matter in the history of the Church. For his contributions to the Faith alone, he should be canonized as a Doctor.

So great has been his leadership that the dream of a united Church is now no longer merely a dream.

I speak now as a conservative. He fought the Soviet Union, undeniably one of the most evil things Men have ever wrought, not with arms, but with faith and words and moral clarity. There is a reason the KGB wished him dead in the 1980s: He was one of the greatest threats they ever faced, merely for demanding that the words of a 2,000 year dead carpenter be taken seriously.

He reminded the world that there is strength in tradition, and there is value in every human life. He gave those of us on the Right moral strength to continue in the harshest of times, while nevertheless reminding us of our own failings.

We lose a suffering servant of God and Man today. We are poorer for it. He is infinitely richer.

Update [2005-4-1 22:30:27 by Thomas]: I want to add something I neglected to add before, for which I thank God too infrequently. While there are those who play up (and in some cases misattribute) the less than perfect treatment the Church has accorded our spiritual forebears, there is no way to deny that grievous things have been done to Jews throughout the years since Christ was put on the Cross, with Christian apathy, support, or outright act. Vatican II began the process of atonement and reconciliation. This Pope, while not completing the process, has reminded us that we Christians would not be but for our Older Brothers, and that God doesn't make promises he goes on to break. It would be easy to say that his prayer at the Wailing Wall, racked with pain every step of the way, was a way of atoning for the sins of Christians against Jews throughout the centuries; but it is more than that. It was a reminder that all Christians owe that pilgrimage, at some level, for those we wounded, and for ourselves.

As a Catholic, as a conservative, and as a human being, I tell you this: Be thankful for this, if nothing else.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

Update [2005-4-1 13:50:54 by trevino]:

The words of Karol Wojtyła.

---

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness...." (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Pope John Paul II has passed, but his legacies of faith and freedom remain in the world. In this time of sorrow and reflection, it falls upon us to honor the fallen and the principles which guided him.

In that spirit, the editors of RedState honor the life of Karol Wojtyła by encouraging our readers to take a moment today to support the work of two
organizations that carry on the Holy Father's legacy.

Priests for Life is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization devoted with a mission directly informed by the late Pope's devotion to the culture of life:

"[To assist] clergy and laity to fight the culture of death ... to unite and encourage all in the Church to give special emphasis to the
life issues in their ministry ... and to help them take a more vocal and active role in the pro-life movement!"

They carry on his passion for the defense of the defenseless through the hands, feet, and hearts of his Church -- and its allies of all faiths. You can make your donation here.

In remembrance of the Pope's extraordinary efforts to secure freedom for all the nations of the world, we also encourage you to support the Victims of Communism Memorial.

"The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a non-profit organization, was established by an Act of Congress to build a memorial in Washington, DC to commemorate the more than 100 million victims of communism; to honor those who successfully resisted communist tyranny; to educate current and future generations about communism's crimes against humanity; and to pay tribute to those who helped win the Cold
War."

You can support their work here.

Please note that this represents our desire to memorialize the life and work of a great man. Neither organization has asked us to do this, and neither should be construed as willfully profiting from this tragedy.

Bless you for your generosity -- and don't forget to add your $0.02.

This piece is from March 25, 2005.

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerc - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

--Attributed, probably erroneously, to Alexis de Tocqueville

Today is Good Friday. The majority of this country celebrates today as the day that the Son of Man allowed himself to suffer and die for humanity's sins, so that Death would no longer prevail.

Today, a woman lies in a bed, dying fastest from dehydration (though starvation is doubtless carrying a toll). Her body is unable to flush wastes from her system, slowly poisoning her. Her skin is flaking. Her tissue is starting to lose consistency. She is dying a death of which any sane man would be terrified.

She dies because courts in one of the Several States ordered her feeding and hydration tubes removed, following one law passed by a legislature, ignoring another. When given the opportunity to intervene, the government of the United States did so only slightly, and hesitatingly.

She will die.

And so I now want to talk to you about federalism.

I have seen the word "federalism" much bandied about the last several weeks, largely as a proxy for the ideas that either (1) states have rights; (2) the Federal government lacks certain powers; (3) the Federal government should not intervene in certain areas of "personal concern"; and/or (4) it is "illegal" for the Federal government to attempt to overturn or interfere with the decision of a judge sitting in one of the several States, preferably but not exclusively with the State's legislature on his side.

This is completely and utterly wrong.

It was the peculiar genius of the Founders of this nation that they conceived of one of the most paradoxically brilliant ideas in the history of political philosophy: That more government would preserve the rights and lives of men than would less; or, more accurately, that more governments would produce this result.

To effect this, the Founders built on the strength of the States existing at the time of the Founding, and added a Federal government of enumerated powers supreme in certain areas of the law. But the idea of federalism would not be if it had been left at that; rather, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments notwithstanding, necessarily, the Federal government had to be a competing, coequal sovereign, actively trying to legislate where the States did.

This was not hard to conceive. It was an essential element of the Founders' conception of the world that the sovereign's duties at the very least reached into life, liberty, and the protection of property. The Founders also knew that men would never be angels, and so the Federal government would invariably try to expand its power into the realms of the States. They counted on muscular states asserting their powers in that conflict, and as a result, we the people wouldn't be terribly bothered. This is why they wrote:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

(Emphasis added.)

Of course, much of this no longer matters. We, the people, gutted the strength of the several States when we ratified the Seventeenth Amendment and, consequently, let the Federal Government decide that the Fourteenth Amendment gave it a crowbar into the states' affairs. Blame the progressives. I do.

The point of all this, however, is that federalism is a mere means to an end. A cleverly crafted means, to be sure, but it is not an end in itself.

It is not a religious faith to be invoked when difficult questions are presented. It is not an aspirational goal. It does not answer the big questions; it provides the framework in which one answers them.

It assuredly does not mean that the states may make decisions without expecting the Federal government to poke its eye in.

In one of the few intelligent points I've ever made, I once asked this: Suppose the Thirteenth Amendment (and, for the sake of argument, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth) were revoked tomorrow. This would return the question of slavery to status quo ante, which is to say, it would be a matter in the province of the several States. Suppose Iowa reinstituted chattel slavery. I'm a citizen of the State of Florida, which does not, in this analysis, legalize slavery. Would it then be ok for me to oppose slavery? To try to Federalize the question again, and have it outlawed? Because I'd really like to.

I was a Federalist in 1994. I was in the Federalist Society in law school. I'd be in it again if I could remember to pay my dues. Federalism has few bigger fans than I. But it is, as I said, merely a means to an end. And it is not, no matter what you might say, an absolute bar on the Federal government's attempts to save the lives of her citizens; rather, it encourages it.

For the idea that one of our governments should no longer try with all its might to meet its duty to protect the life of one of its citizens means that we are no longer living in the shadow of our ancestors. It means we've forgotten why Federalism exists, and instead that we worship its misbegotten child, the descendant of all the strife of the hundred years following the Civil War, the shadow called states' rights.

It means we are no longer great.