More on my AdSense Outage

The FAQs were not very illuminating:

Why was my account disabled? Can you tell me more about the invalid click activity you detected? Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that may have been involved.
As you may know, Google treats invalid click activity very seriously, analyzing all clicks and impressions to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. If we determine that an AdSense account may pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we may disable that account to protect our advertisers' interests.
Lastly, please note that as outlined in our Terms and Conditions, Google will use its sole discretion when determining instances of invalid click activity.

As much as I've been tempted to look at the ads on my page, I have not, because that was one of the conditions of having them on there--the theory being, of course, that they don't want you to click yourself into free money. Fine. So which one of you, my dear readers, is trying to be too nice and racking up my points? Hmmmmm? I wonder what you have to do to get it reinstated, or if once you abuse the service in their minds, you're hosed. Hm. The world wonders. So much for that idea, I guess.

Random Thoughts on a Friday Morning

Apparently my last posting--an analysis of the Generation X mindset--caused a bunch of dirty words to come up for AdSense, so my advertisements have been shut down. Check it out: did I write anything THAT bad? Guess so. Oh, well.

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Remember that book reading list I hacked out earlier in January? Well, if I want to get into the spirit of things for my Europe trip, I might need to add a couple, like:

• A Moveable Feast and A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (read one already, but what the heck)
• Ulysses, James Joyce (Ouch--I avoided this one in English Lit)
• A whole bunch of travel books
• Some foreign language training videos (my French is nil, ditto my Italian)

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My mother finds it curious that I am both future focused (working for the space business) and past focused (reading a lot of history). It sort of makes sense to me, as I'm trying to understand what social patterns worked in the past as a way for describing how we might best establish ourselves out there. I still haven't given up my plans to write some science fiction.

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I dug through the latest Europe travel book, and I will have a list of potential places to visit on the trip. Onward and upward.

Useful Travel Links and Marketing to Generation X

If you yourself have an interest in traveling to Europe, here are some fabulous links I've gotten from friends and family:

• http://www.avantidestinations.com/
• http://www.bovec.si/
• http://www.bxwinex.com/wine_day_trips.htm#stemilion
• http://www.europe.org/lowcostairlines.html
• http://www.kanpai-tourisme.com/Beaujolais-wine-tours-france.htm
• http://www.lonelyplanet.com/
• http://www.palinstravels.co.uk/index.php.
• http://www.railpass.com/
• http://www.ricksteves.com/
• http://www.royalcaribbean.com/gohome.do
• http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/
• http://www.tripadvisor.com/
• http://www.travlang.com/
• http://www.ustoa.com/personalityquiz.cfm

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I've also been giving some thought to marketing to my own generation, Gen X (born 1963-1977 or thereabouts). Gen Y is the hot topic for marketers, given their size and potential future influence. However, not nearly as much attention has been given to Gen X because we're smaller, even though we're soon to be taking over the reins of power and money. Here's a list of primary cultural influences I came up with off the top of my head:

• Space: Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Skylab, Shuttle when it was new
• OPEC Oil Embargo/gas lines
• Environmental movement born (“Earth Day,” energy conservation, 55 mph speed limit, etc.)
• Watergate
• Fall of Vietnam
• “Stagflation”/Misery Index
• Iranian hostage crisis
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan/1980 Olympic Boycott
• Reagan shot
• Challenger
• Gulf War I
• Network TV shows: Norman Lear, M*A*S*H, Happy Days, Three’s Company, Cheers, Cosby, Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Cable TV: HBO, MTV, CNN
• Movies: Star Wars, Star Trek, Ordinary People, The Godfather, Kramer vs. Kramer, The China Syndrome, and an endless series of horror and disaster films
• Other items: increase in divorces, “latch-key” kids (I was one), and working moms; disco, classic rock, and “hair bands”; micromarketing; “upscale” everything

I invited friends and family members to suggest other trends or influences. Responses have ranged from the cogent (video games, personal computers, the 1972 Olympic Massacre, the Cold War and its end) to the silly (Dorothy Hamill haircuts). I look forward to others. These influences and mindsets need to be understood as clearly as Gen Y, since once the Boomers retire--if some of them ever do--the next generational clash will occur between those two groups.

My own personal take on the Gen X experience runs something like this. I believe my peers inherited the radical individualism of the '60s, but have overlaid do-your-own-thingism with a cynical mistrust of mass protests, radicalism, and government action. The golden age of hippiedom was essentially over by the time we were able to understand what was going on in the news. Our first awareness of government was probably Watergate, which was an example of executive malpractice. Our next examples of government action (or inaction, more to the point) were the energy shocks of the '70s, the joys of stagflation and the "misery index" of the last serious recession, and even the inability of the U.S. military to rescue 52 American hostages.

Divorce was on the rise, as was distrust of established institutions, ranging from the church to the Boy Scouts. Cops were on the take. Priests were manhandling young boys. Scout masters and teachers weren't doing much better. The environment, we were told, was going to hell and we would all be frozen from a new global ice age in 20 years. American competitiveness was starting to slip, our cars were no damn good, and our morals weren't much better. So institutional trust has been hard to come by.

As near as I can tell, most of my peers are "fiscally conservative, socially liberal." By this they generally mean that they don't think it's a bright idea for the federal government to be spending gobs of money on welfare programs that don't work, but they also don't want the government intruding on matters of personal behavior. This sort of thinking drives ideologues of the left and right insane, because that essentially makes a lot of us disaffected moderates or Libertarians. And if you look at the average Ron Paul rally, you'll see what I mean.

I think Gen X was much more capitalistic and money-focused in its college years than the Boomers, which at least claimed to be idealistic. (I'm thinking of Winona Ryder in Heathers telling her former-hippie teacher to "Get a life!")

There seems to be more of a "looking out for number one" attitude among us, with money seen as a means to an end. A lot of Gen Xers got sucked up into the Dot Com bubble, which wiped out a lot of fortunes (yet another example of insecurity and dashed hopes--you'd think some of us would've learned our lessons from the '70s). The Dot Com revolution also created a lot of computer engineers and not a lot of aerospace engineers. After all, we tend to follow the money. Aerospace was going south by the time we graduated, thanks to the end of the Cold War, with job cuts happening in large numbers. NASA, while a source of pride, was no longer a crucial part of American identity (thanks, again, to the end of the Cold War). And thanks to Challenger, we began to doubt governmental space efforts as well.

Gen Xers haven't all been disappointed or failures, by any stretch. Those who survived the Dot Bomb did so with style. Consider Elon Musk, for example, who formed and sold two or three different companies before founding his own space launch company. Another major supporter of privately funded space travel is Rick Tumlinson. While I'm not certain of his age, he has an Xer attitude about space development, particularly in his cutting remarks about and distrust toward government-run space ventures.

Another thing in Gen X's favor is the fact that we have endured the first birth pangs of the computer revolution. While we've had our share of disappointments (see above), we've also gotten used to constant change. In a sense, we were the first generation to live with the consequences of what the '60s hath wrought, for good and ill.

Old timers like me can already amuse, horrify, and bore our younger coworkers with stories of working with typewriters or Apple IIc computers in grade school or by talking about the relative merits of Pong, the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, TRS-80, or the original Nintendo entertainment system. We were the first to stake out claims and benefit financially from the Internet. However, we are almost dinosaurs in our attachment to print and stable forms of ownership, like physical books, CDs, records, tapes, and copyright laws. We are already fighting a serious battle between those who prefer virtual ownership and rights and those who expect to be paid for every piece of paper work. We are also the last generation of Cold Warriors, the last group to whom "commie" was a deadly serious and nasty epithet--at least to those of us who considered ourselves children of Reagan.

Today the most likely place you'll find an Xer is as a consultant or independent contributor. Rather than focus on front-line jobs, we tend to gravitate toward positions that allow us to demonstrate our strengths and sink or swim by our own efforts. We pride ourselves in being tech-savvy, but I know that I for one use computers as electronic versions of paper-based processes, like mail, documents, or contracts that could still change. I suspect that Gen X and Gen Y have very different ideas about the permanence of the written word. The "real" thing for me is the signed paper, not some electronic form. I can't speak for others on this issue, but I'd say I have an appreciation of how things were done before while still being tech-savvy enough to navigate a computer without freaking out. I don't worry that I'm going to crash the computer, I just want to know how a new toy works and whether it's useful or not.

I'm a laggard when it comes to embracing the latest toys, like the Internet or cell phones, but eventually I was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. For me, the constant presence of electronic gadgetry is an intrusion on my privacy, and my best revenge is to just turn the damn things off when I get home or if I want to be left alone. Other Xer and Boomer bosses I know live by their crackberries, and they're welcome to them. Given my pre-Boomer parents, I suppose I grew up with a profounder respect for privacy. That, too, might be going out the window with Gen Y, who bring their cell phones (with cameras) everywhere.

I couldn't say what the trend is for Xers, but I suspect we're not nearly as hep to all the gadgetry as our younger cousins. I would say this about Gen X workers: we take our personal performance very seriously. We appear to be less than patient when others drop the ball. And we're very task-driven. Give us a cool assignment, leave us alone to finish it, and then we'll come back for the next project.

A coworker pointed out that we are used to entertaining ourselves (again, a function of the single-parent household), and that also means "rugged individualism" runs rampant through our cultural DNA. I was accused by a manager a couple years ago of being rather "transaction-oriented" in my business relationships, which I've learned is also an Xer trait: we'll call you when we need you. In a corporate world where "team building" and "team playing" are the big buzzwords, Xers can look like the odd man/woman out. However, that's often why we end up as consultants--not part of the traditional management culture, able to come in, analyze and criticize what's wrong without the responsibility for implementing, and then move on to the next client/task. If there's still a "hired gun" left in the corporate world, that gun is probaby being fired by an Xer.

So what we're left with is an odd conglomeration of individuals. We can be broadly categorized as a group that hates categories. We don't always play well with others, but we'll work our asses off on individual projects if we can see the point or gain in it. We were also the first generation to get comfortable with the idea of career development and job hopping, a mindset Gen Y has in spades. I read somewhere that America breeds the most ineffectual 18-year-olds and the most competent 30-year-olds anywhere, and that's probably true. When I was graduating high school, we were being disparaged in the media as "mall rats" and "slackers." The depressing strains of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and related grunge made up the musical mindset after a decade of pop music that was performed by people with strange hair and whose output ranged from decent to deplorable. None of us learned to dance, or at least dance well, because everyone was told to just "do your own thing." And a lot of the music you couldn't dance to anyway, just play "air guitar" to--a phenomenon that has now turned into a video game. If one statement covers the Gen-X world view, "Do your own thing" would be it.

It'll be interesting to see how well we manage to get along with Gen Y, as opposed to the Boomers. We have a common interest in technology, but obviously a different relationship with it, as we struggled while they're used to things working well and at a high level. Gen Yers tend to be more group-oriented, more trusting of authority (but like us in their willingness to question it), and much more optimistic about the future. For instance, I recall with chagrin once trying to explain to a younger coworker what a "recession" was. The ruthless capitalist in me likes to think that Xers will have a decent future ahead of us, as there are so few of us, we'll have to be in demand--won't we? Not necessarily. The Gen Y kids are go-getters, and not shy about pushing for the next promotion. Still, when push comes to shove, is a Boomer CEO going to hand the reins over to a snarky but more experienced Xer or an inexperienced but team-player Millennial? I guess time will tell.

Paring Down the Wish List

Well, reality is setting in, budgetarily and chronologically. Assuming I am utterly ruthless with myself on taking leave between now and next September, the MOST I could hope for is 20 days in Europe. I have a budget ceiling, but don't feel like sharing it with the entire Western world. Suffice to say, I've got a budget in mind, and so I ended up prioritizing to some extent:

• Dublin
• Wine Country (Bordeaux / Lyon)
• Paris / Versailles / Strasbourg (if I can manage to finagle a tour)
• Rome
• Venice
• Salzburg / Alps
• London

The itinerary is not impossible, travel-wise. Accounting for Europe's quirky rail, ferry, and air routes, I could probably manage the following:

1. London
2. Dublin
3. Paris (incl. Versailles and possibly Strasbourg)
4. Lyon
5. Switzerland (Geneva)
6. Venice
7. Rome

The advantage here, too, is that I might be able to avoid driving, which is something I'd really rather avoid--especially if I'm going to be wine tasting, etc., getting lost, etc. Friends and family have offered a variety of references and advice, everything from recommending tour organizers to "Let us handle it!" My father sent a site that provided a "vacation personality test," which pretty much confirmed what I knew already: once I'm off the clock, I don't play well with others. So independent travel is still an option. I just like to keep my options open. One coworker I talked to actually did what I suggested was doable only in America: driving down the Moselle without a plan or a reservation, and staying wherever the mood suited him. That itinerary irritated his wife, who preferred more structure, but as I'm the only one on this trip, I would probably be fine. However, again, I'd prefer not to drive in another language.

And the research continues. If I stick with the prioritized list above, I can hone my reading and ditch the German phrase book. Progress, of a sort.

European Wish List, Part 3

Well, I just spent the last few hours trying to hack out a sample itinerary, factoring in things like time, distance, train schedules, hotel rates, and miscellaneous fees (tours, tickets, etc.), and I came up with an absurd amount of money. Here are some other things I discovered in the course of doing business:

• There is no simple or short way to get from Dublin to Calais. One can get back to London (Euston), but then you've got to find the magic path within British Rail that gets you to Dover and thence to the Chunnel. The maps were not helpful. I ended up working with a ferry from Liverpool to Dublin and then a flight from Dublin to Brussels. The moral: it's farther from Ireland to Europe than I thought.
• Aside from my side trips to some battlefields in Belgium, there is really not much need for a car, assuming I can afford hotels that are close to train stations.
• Prague, while undoubtedly beautiful, is not convenient to anything in my current itinerary--by plane, train, or automobile--unless I adjust my route dramatically.
• All trains lead to (or from) Paris. Moving east-west across France is problematic.
• There are no tours or one-day seminars available at the International Space University. I suppose I could my exalted status as a NASA writer and AIAA member to request one, but otherwise Strasbourg turns out to be an unnecessary detour. Anywhere I'd drive from there would eat up half the day, so using it as a "base of operations" isn't quite the option I'd hoped.
• I got exhausted just reading the itinerary. If I continue on the travel-alone path, I might have to severely curtail the number of times I cahnge "homes," if only for my own safety/sanity.
• Advantage: America. Our hotel chains have a consistent look/feel/quality to them. And they're ubiquitous. If you can't find one that's empty, there's generally one down the street or across town, and you know what to expect once you get there. I also believe the American system of travel is more flexible in terms of extended or curtailed stays. From what I've been able to determine, the European hotel system tends to expect a little more dependability from its guests. I could be wrong, of course.
• More items might come off the list, especially if I find myself fighting "train fatigue." For instance, any or all of Northern Germany. I've already come to the conclusion that driving isn't worth the aggravation.
• I might have to check into tours that offer longer stays in fewer cities, offering quality instead of quantity.
• I bought another book on Europe, as recommended by the Rough Guide. I went with the Frommer's Europe, which was a dollar more than Fodor's because I'm a sucker for a fold-out map.
• I have said some mightily uncomplimentary things about travel agents, especially after being on the receiving end of promises they've made to clients checking in at Disney. However, if my next agent actually manages to pull together an itinerary that does most of what I want or need to do, she will have more than earned her money. (And no, I'm not being sexist--I haven't ever met a male travel agent when I've walked into an agency.)
• I need to put a more realistic leash on my budget. I was coming up with a number well above my original plan for the entire trip, and this was BEFORE factoring in food, beverages, or souvenirs. Ouch.

And I guess that's it for tonight. Tomorrow I go find a travel agent that's open longer than M-F, 9-5. Sterling Travel helped me out on one trip, but that was when they were open on weekends.

The European Trip Wish List, Version 2

I've removed and added a couple of items on my original European trip wish list.

• Attend a play at The Globe
• Visit the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin and, oh yeah, have a pint or two
• Attend a class/seminar at the International Space University
• Tour a couple of World War II battlefields
• Tour Versailles
• Tour the Louvre
• Visit some of Hemingway's favorite cafes
• Visit All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany (birthplace of the Reformation)
• Have a few brews at Oktoberfest
• Visit Salzburg, famed both for Mozart and The Sound of Music
• Visit Prague (per my friend Cliff)
• Do wine tasting in a variety of nations/types of vineyard (Bordeaux, Piedmont, Alsace, etc.)
• Visit the French Riviera
• Tour the Vatican
• Tour Florence

I'm wondering if I shouldn't just set up a couple of base camps and do a week here, a week there, just to get things done with a minimum of fuss. For instance:

• 2 days in England (just to get that Shakespeare fix and maybe catch the British Museum)
• 2 days in Ireland--one day sightseeing/pub crawling, one day visiting Guinness and pub crawling
• 7 to 9 days in Strasbourg, France to cover my battlefield and Paris and Germany outings
• 1 day in Salzburg
• 1 day in Prague
• 3 days in southern France (Rhone Valley, the Riviera)
• 10 days in Tuscany (to cover Florence/Rome)

That kills about a month and theoretically gives me a little time at the end there to recover. This process will continue for some time. The big goal right now is to reduce the amount of driving I have to do, the number of hotels I have to use and vacate, and the amount of reservations I need to keep straight in my head. I sent an email out to my experienced-traveler family members and friends. No doubt I'll get a lot of contradictory advice, but such are the joys of diverse opinions.

Book Review: The Rough Guide--First-Time Europe: Everything You Need to Know Before You Go

Sometime last year, I got this wild idea that I needed to go on a serious, "grown-up" vacation for my 40th birthday. My choices meandered between Europe, Hawaii, and Napa (wine tour, don'tcha know) before I finally settled on Europe to satisfy my inner cultural geek/snob. The next thing that concerned me was how and where to go. "How" would mean one of two options: guided tour or independent travel. The Rough Guide is geared toward the latter. In fact, it is designed for someone much like me 17 years ago, when I had the choice between "backpacking through Europe" after graduating or moving to Florida. (I chose the latter route, fearing that I might have to live in Illinois after I returned, and my trip to the Continent has been held in abeyance ever since.)

The amusing and annoying part about the book's chosen target audience is that it deals with kid-type problems ("convincing your parents" is one such amusing chapter), though it does offer mostly age-neutral advice that anyone can use. It is also rather bar- and adventure-centric. As I reach the exalted age of 40, my interests are focused more on the culinary and the cerebral.

Another problem with the Rough Guide is that it is meant for the two-, three-, or four-month traveler who really is "backpacking through Europe." There are large sections dedicated to camping out, staying in hostels, and living dirt-cheap. Getting older also means getting a little richer. If I wanted to go camping, I'd head for the Blue Ridge for a lot fewer dollars. I'm more likely to stay at a hotel (no s), travel by car or train instead of hitchhiking or bicycling, and live as well as my budget will allow. For those who are interested and have the time, the Guide offers tips on securing employment while over there, including volunteer work or sheer scut work in a variety of fields. (And speaking of fields, working in a French vineyard might earn you room and board, if you've got the time and inclination.)

And here's where I have to turn on the Egoism Machine and bring this discussion back to me, because I bought this book with a specific purpose in mind: I plan to be a single adult traveler, hoping to get a taste of culture after a long stretch of busting my @ss for the space business. This holiday will last anywhere from two to four weeks (it might mean burning all of my vacation time and asking for a leave of absence on top of that). After a three-year stretch of doing my best for king and country, what's going to be more relaxing: depending on myself to make a lot of arrangements in advance or being herded around with a bunch of old folks in go-go-go mode for two weeks straight?

This will be a leisure trip. That means I will be there to enjoy myself in whatever manner seems fitting to me. I don't plan to be hustling for a jobs tutoring Euros in English or picking grapes in some Frenchman's vineyard to make ends meet. I'll have the money to, by Deus, spend and do things I wouldn't be able to do here in the ol' U.S. of A. Staying in a dive of a hostel with a bunch of 20-somethings making whooppee and smoking pot 'till all hours of the night is not my idea of a relaxing vacation. Plus, I'd probably get questioned by the authorities for being some sort of dirty-old-man stalker if I did stay at such places. So: what to do about hotels, B&Bs, and the like? Again, that will be more work on the front end, but less stress "over there" because I know I'll have a place to flop for the night.

I guess I need to find yet another book.

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And since I'm on the subject of touring Europe, the book had one suggestion thatI did like: "Think in terms of what you plan to do, not just what you plan to see." This is important, because traveling alone as a middle-aged single guy is sad enough (who the hell takes my picture?) without having some sort of active agenda planned. I will need to do what I do at my space conventions: turn on my reporter's personality and talk to people. This is not always easy. When I'm on my own, I can go hours or days without talking to anyone. If I don't talk to anyone, I really won't have anyone around to take my picture, will I? So one thing I really need to do is make a list of things I want to do.

That said, here follows my list. Some of it does, indeed, involve seeing, but I also intend to be learning about what I see, which is not quite the same as just snapping a photograph and saying, "Okay, let's hit the Eiffel Tower now." I probably can't afford to do all of these (unless I can get paid for writing while I'm over there), but what the hell, I can always whittle down a wish list.

• Attend a play at The Globe
• Visit the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin and, oh yeah, have a pint or two
• Visit with my friend Hella
• Attend a class/seminar at the International Space University
• Tour a couple of World War II battlefields
• Tour Versailles
• Tour the Louvre
• Visit some of Hemingway's favorite cafes
• Visit Peenemünde (also per Cliff)
• Visit my maternal grandmother's home town in Germany
• Visit Salzburg, famed both for Mozart and The Sound of Music
• Visit Prague (per my friend Cliff)
• Visit Slovenia and Croatia (per my friend Scott)
• Do wine tasting in a variety of nations/types of vineyard (Bordeaux, Piedmont, Alsace, etc.)
• Visit the French Riviera
• Tour the Vatican
• Tour Florence
• Cruise the islands of the Aegean

Too much? Probably. But that's the list: UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Austria, Greece, and Germany. No sweat. The best time of year to be doing these things appears to be September, as several of the big touristy spots close down or get really hot and crowded in my birthday month (August). I rearranged the list from North to South, under the assumption that the weather up north is likely to get a little frostier as one heads into October.

Or I could just say, "Screw this whole thing, I'm goin' to Vegas!" right? Feh.

Google Backs Down on Matthew Lee

Google has reinstated Matthew Lee as a credible news source.

Huzzah!

If You Can't Stop the Bad News, Stop Whoever's Publishing It

For those who wonder why conservatives hate the United Nations, let the story of Matthew Lee serve as a lesson. This guy's internet news/blog site, Inner City Press, was de-listed by Google as a legitimate news source after writing one too many critical pieces exposing corruption within the UN.

Let's be frank here: this is flat-out censorship in the purest sense of the word. Censorship is not conservative movie-goers refusing to watch Hollywood-produced left-wing propaganda films (that is a mass consumer choice in the marketplace). Censorship is something the government does. And if the United States government had done this to, say, the Politico web site or Michael Moore's site, there would have been blood in the streets of Washington. As it is, Lee will probably be ignored or marginalized as a right-wing kook.

Let us consider this piece of wisdom, which has been nearly lost in the vicious, frantic arguing between left and right.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

--Pastor Martin Niemöller

An authoritarian government need not be left-wing or right-wing to be pernicious and terrifying. It need only have the power to silence those who oppose it and the will to exercise that power. And, as Goldwater was fond of saying, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have."

Anyhow, do you get the picture? The UN is a corrupt organization. It is authoritarian. And if the members had its way, the United States would be disarmed, silenced, and stripped poor. Someone within their bureaucracy was able to take steps to reduce the ability of a reporter to get out stories of malfeisance--and they did this in our country. I have an excellent suggestion for relocating the UN. How does the West Bank sound? Or Antarctica? Or an island threatened with flooding due to global warming? Or the middle of the Pacific, for that matter. Anywhere but here.

Book Review: Ideas Have Consequences

I have read a variety of "big books" on the state of Western Civilization: its origins, its moments of greatness, and its moments of decadence and decay. Perhaps the most convincing book on the "fall" of Western Civilization is Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, which puts the source of the West's loss of confidence in the Great War of 1914-18. However, Richard M. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences is the first one I've encountered that put Western Civ on the wrong track at the start of the Renaissance and the turn from medieval scholasticism to modern materialism.

Weaver's essential complaint about the West's state of culture (he was writing in 1948) was that we made an error in turning away from Platonic "forms" and toward more Aristotelian realism. This might require a little explanation, as Platonic forms are rarely taught today. Plato, philosophic student of Socrates, believed that the universe existed on two planes, the material world we actually lived in, which was corrupt and imperfect, and a superior world of perfect forms, of which the real world was merely a pale reflection. For example, in Plato's two-tier universe, concepts such as horses, beauty, chairs, trees, or men as they exist in our daily lives are but imperfect knockoffs of true, ideal Horses, Beauty, Chairs, Trees, or Men. For Plato, these forms were more "real" than the world in which we lived, and thus more worthy of emulating or admiring. The genius of St. Paul the Evangelist was to embrace Platonic forms as a way of explaining the Christian Heaven to Greek Gentiles.

In the Middle Ages, after the fall of Rome, the Christian Church gave birth to Western Civilization by more fully articulating the merger between Greek and Christian thought. The primary scholars of the time were Christian popes, bishops, fathers, monks, professors, or students of the same, and their primary concerns were primarily philosophic, moral, and religious. Weaver believes the West made a crucial error by shifting its emphasis from such questions and toward a world view in which "man is the measure of all things."

The first half of Ideas Have Consequences therefore demonstrates how this shift from philosophy to materialism led to greater and greater emphasis on the physical realm to the detriment of religion, nature, and ultimately man himself. Weaver sees science as a move away from a synthesized and balanced view of the world toward one where specialization causes people to learn more and more about smaller and smaller parts of reality (in the Platonic sense). In short, Weaver laments the movement from Truth with a capital T toward mere facts. He believes that shared truths enable better communication between individuals and nations, and that the collapse of the Christian Western order that began with the Renaissance led inevitably to the devastation of the Second World War 400 years later.

Weaver, like Russell Kirk in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot also laments the loss of gentlemanly aristocracy and the rise of egalitarian democracy. Weaver and Kirk both see the French Revolution of 1789 as a tragedy for Western Civilization because it called for an end to acceptance of hierarchy of any kind: political, moral, or (later) economic. The loss of a liberally educated class of gentlemen expected to cultivate the arts and a measured response to matters of politics, meant that the masses no longer had a group of individuals worthy of looking up to, emulating, or obtaining wisdom from. America, of course, has been the home of the radical egalitarian ideal since the time of Andrew Jackson, and Weaver and Kirk perceived that the last aristocrats of the old gentlemanly sort were put to the flame and the sword in the Civil War. From then on, everyone was expected to be an equal, and political authority became more problematic: "You're no better than anyone else, Mac. Who says you have a right to be in charge?"

In addition to the rise of egalitarian democracy, Weaver lectures against the dangers of materialism as applied to the state. If the bourgeois ideal is material comfort, then the democratic state's primary purpose is to ensure stability and eliminate any tendency toward moral considerations. He likens the middle class of the West to spoiled children who are incapable of recognizing duty, honor, or hard work. He sees the public translating "the right to...the pursuit of happiness" as "the right to happiness," which is to be furnished by the state. And, of course, in the spirit of egalitarianism, no one can be more comfortable than his neighbors, so if some individuals are more comfortable than others, their goods must be taken from them in the form of socialism to ensure material comfort for all.

To combat this rising tide of radical egalitarianism, Weaver proposes a program centered first upon a vigorous, philosophical defense of private property, which he describes as the "last metaphysical right" the middle class has left to it after taking away religion and hierarchy (of station or ideals). He also calls for educational emphasis on poetry and Socratic dialectic rather than semantics or specialization. He is calling emphatically for a return to an integrated world view for the spiritual health of the individual, and a turning away from materialism, which he sees as interfering with or opposed to the integrated individual.

As I read this book, I found myself wondering about its implications for space advocacy (it's an occupational hazard, I confess). Clearly, we would not have put men on the Moon without dramatic advances in the study of the natural world. And yet even at the time of the event, writers like Norman Mailer were complaining about the flat, unemotional, unspiritual nature of the enterprise and the men embarking upon it. Attempts to tie our spiritual selves to the material action of flying to the Moon were met with a lawsuit by an atheist, perhaps illustrating Weaver's point. There is also this problem: as affluent as America might have been in 1969, it has become even more so now. The spoiled children Weaver described in 1948 have come into their own as obese materialists who believe government owes them a living and who reject the notions of sacrifice or hard work--notions that will be critical to building permanent establishments in space or on other worlds. The "New Space" entrepreneurs have generated more excitement than NASA's revived human space program because space tourism offers a more egalitarian possibility of access, whereas NASA will most likely continue its tradition of sending up hyper-competent, non-egalitarian Astronauts. Many space advocates are actively hostile to religion. Would they welcome a return to religion-based verities, even if students educated in such a moral-material synthesis build the first permanent habitations on the Moon or Mars?

Regardless of how Weaver's solutions are implemented in space, they still bear contemplating here on Earth, especially as we have at least two presidential candidates who are socialists in all but name and a nation where welfare costs outweigh any other single expense. Is there still room for religion, let alone private property, integrated liberal (in the old sense of broad) education, and Platonic/Christian ideals? One can sit back and wonder, or one can take action. Cultural revival requires the efforts of active, involved individuals. And if one believes Weaver, those involved individuals must also be willing to give up on some of their material comforts and conveniences to achieve the revived morality he seeks.

School Shooting, Part Deux

My rant about the sources of the killer wimps still stands, albeit this one also had mental illness on his chart. He obviously had sane moments, or he wouldn't have made it up through grad school. In those moments when he did take his meds--what did he think about in moments of distress? The police might find details on the kid's laptop, and perhaps that might reveal something.

A thought occurs to me: suppose they discover that this kid was a flat-out atheist. Will that wake anyone up to the state of the nation? I'll continue to pray for the families of the slain. They and their children did nothing to deserve this, and yet they are the ones who will pay for his madness, year after year, for as long as the lost are remembered. May God watch over them and grant wisdom to others to prevent this sort of nitwit from becoming another senseless weapon.

Another School Shooting, Book Review: Manliness

This one irritates me even more than usual because it happened at my alma mater. Every time we go through one of these geeks-gone-mad-with-guns events, I get thoroughly P.O.ed. This kid's story hasn't come out yet; all we know is that he was a "skinny white kid." As I matched that description once upon a time, I'll tell my story because it bears repeating.

Twenty-odd years ago, I could've been Derek Klebold or any of those other skinny kids who got pushed to far too often by bullies. My sophomore picture is a sight to behold: greasy hair, unhappy expression, bad complexion. I favored military-style clothing at the time and had a deep interest in the military and weapons of various sorts. Today, my teachers would've dragged me in for counseling. As it was, I just went to church and read and wrote science fiction stories to vent my frustrations. The point being: I survived and grew out of it.

This bears directly on a book I'm reading right now, Manliness by Harvey C. Mansfield. The book deals with the "gender-neutral" society and the attempts--mostly by feminists--to weed out "manly" or simply masculine behavior. Aside from heroes in movies and cops and soldiers in the field, all other men are expected to be docile, violence-free, and utterly equal to women, despite 10,000 or more years of evolution stating otherwise.

Here are the lessons one learns, as a guy, on the school yard:

• Cowardice is not rewarded, it is considered contemptible.
• Cowardice can take many forms, but the primary one is the unwillingness to stand up for yourself, verbally or physically.
• If you make at least a valid attempt to fight back, you'll get more respect than asking someone politely to stop.
• Not all guys need to beat the cr@p out of every other guy just to prove who's the toughest. However, those who do act that way will only respect an act of self-defense. All other behaviors will result in continued attacks.
• Even egghead males have a ritualistic manner of testing the limits and strengths of others, be they potential friends, enemies, or strangers. Guys would call it "testing the other guy's manhood." My mother would call it teasing. Call it what you will, the male testing ritual is as old as Cain and Abel, and we know how that one turned out.

Now there is a difference between sheer aggressiveness and assertiveness, as the book points out. Assertiveness is aggressiveness with a purpose. Its purpose is to vigorously stand up for oneself, one's beliefs, or someone else. This willingness to fight for one's beliefs is what has kept women and children both protected and in peril for as long as human beings have been in existence. And this fighting spirit (aggressiveness, assertiveness) is the thing gender-neutral schools and human resource departments today are trying to tame, medicate, or get rid of. After all, physical biology still favors men over women in matters of violence, female bodybuilders and Xena notwithstanding. If society is to be gender-neutral, something must be done to overcome that unpleasant fact. Thus we have sensitivity training, "time outs," sexual harassment lawsuits, and ritalyn.

The ones who suffer most from this de-masculinization of the culture (not emasculation, that is a different issue) are the sensitive, brainy, hyper kids like me.They are the type B personalities who aren't particularly gifted in matters of physical prowess and who are often over-eager to please authority figures. So, when teacher/parent/preacher says, "Do unto others" or "Don't fight," they obey, and their peers tear them apart on the playground after school.

There was a time not so long ago when young boys were mentored by fathers, coaches, and male teachers on the proper applications of aggressiveness, violent and nonviolent sports, and even provided tips on how to fight properly. Young boys were brought up to respect discipline and restraint but also firmness and resolve in matters of honor, including the defense of women and children. Are any of those things taught now? Could they be without the PC police going nuts? I have not yet finished Mansfield's book, but my guess is that he's recommending that we do so anyway.

This brings me back to the kids who have gone nuts and shot people at Columbine, Virginia Tech, NIU, etc. It is my contention that these "quiet" kids are not just reacting with deadly force against bullies. They are having, in fact, a fundamental moral conflict between what their elders teach them in the classroom and what their peers teach them in the real world. They've obeyed and obeyed and obeyed, and not fought back. This has only earned them more ridicule and contempt from the peers, whom they simultaneously hate and crave respect from--and they see no way out. More importantly, they have been taught no other way out! And what ways they have been taught come from the media, and we see how well those lessons turn out.

Fortunately, I had a mother who respected the value of manliness. She backed me up when I decided to play baseball (badly, for one season, but still), play with guns, go to Cub Scouts, join karate--all activities that were considered normal for boys. If I started acting like a sissy (crying unnecessarily or for some minor reason, for example), she told me to grow up or even once, "Be a man." Amateur psychologist that she was, she also encouraged me to turn my energy elsewhere, to writing, to reading, to thinking about the future and the fact that adolescent pain is just that, and that it doesn't last forever.

And then, of course, I got to know my father after I graduated college, even lived with him for awhile. He introduced me to conservatism, masculine behaviors and ways of thinking in the office, more direct ways of thought. Through him I acquired more rectitude, stoicism, and maturity. By the time I left Orlando, he'd become my best friend. Hard to believe from a kid who smart- (and bad-)mouthed his divorced father for years. But it happened. And what I didn't learn from him, I learned from the conservatism he cultivated and the military and engineering role models I came to know in my professional life. No man is self-made; he is brought about through his contacts and, yes, his conflicts with others.

Earlier I reviewed The Dangerous Book for Boys, which I believe fills a need for boys growing up today. Equally important as teaching or allowing boys to do boyish things must come a renewed respect for manliness, and the maturity that comes with it. I hope those lessons are learned before another school becomes a damned statistic.

Book Review: My Grandfather's Son

It isn't very often that I am able or interested enough to read a book in one sitting. My Grandfather's Son by Judge Clarence Thomas is one of those exceptions. I have more than a passing interest in Judge Thomas, because his public inquisition prior to his confirmation to the Supreme Court had a large hand in turning me away from mushy moderateness and toward knuckle-dragging conservatism.

Thomas opens his narrative with meeting his biological father, a man he calls only "C," when he was nine. C soon disappears after that, and doesn't reappear until much later in his life. This incident might not make sense chronologically, but narratively it does: he moves his father offstage quickly to make it clear who he regarded as his real father.

Born to a single mother in the tidewater country of southeast Georgia, Thomas grew up what we would describe as dirt-poor. He seems to have had fond feelings for Pinpoint, GA, where he wandered about with his brother and other boys doing things boys did. The lack of indoor plumbing or electrical conveniences didn't seem to bother him. When one of his cousins burned down the home where they were living, he and his mother and brother moved into a different sort of dirt-poor neighborhood in urban Savannah. Thomas's mother was a housekeeper for a white family (this was 1955), and could barely keep the family together and fed, so she arranged for the boys to move in with her parents, whom Thomas called Aunt Tina and Daddy. Daddy was a hard, semi-literate man who kept the boys working and harshly disciplined, but fed. As the book's title suggests, Daddy became the most important influence on this man who grew up in less than promising circumstances.

Daddy was born in 1907 in the deeply segregated south and made it his mission to work for himself rather than work for a white man. The circumstances of segregation bothered him, but he still regarded America as a place worthy of respect. He passed on this fierce independence and work ethic to his grandsons. Afraid of the influence of city life, he moved his wife and the boys out to some family land in rural Georgia and built a farm. Thomas doesn't discuss a lot about having fun on the farm, though he is quite thorough about describing where he picked up his work habits. Daddy believed in working "sun to sun," and that diligence paid off for Clarence as he got older.

Thomas and his brother went to school in Catholic schools, which was still a bit of a rarity at the time, but if there were serious incidents of hostility or racism from the white kids, Thomas doesn't dwell on them. The biggest influences on him there were the nuns, who again encouraged hard work. In his mid-teens, Thomas was giving serious thought to becoming a priest, and the nuns and eventually Daddy were happy to lead him along the path necessary to accomplish that goal: a Catholic high school and then Holy Cross College.

It was in college that Thomas began to learn more about the civil rights struggle, and what the various leaders (Martin Luther King, Louis Farrakhan, and the Black Panthers were saying in particular) were saying should be done to improve the lot of what were then called Negroes. Despite growing up in the segregated South, it wasn't until he moved to Massachusetts, he writes, until he heard someone call him "nigger." When a classmate expressed satisfaction that Dr. King had been killed, Thomas broke with his faith and his chosen profession. He became, in his own words, "an angry black man." Of course his decision to no longer pursue the priesthood resulted in a break with Daddy, leaving him alone to face his disillusionment with the white North.

You can see how Thomas's professional outlook and career were formed by his "Daddy" and his experiences in the civil rights movement. His participation in a demonstration that led to a riot scared him enough to realize that he was heading down a dangerous path. Rather than stay with the path of radical activism, he returned to his studies, eventually being accepted to both Harvard and Yale. He chose Yale, but eventually determined that the choice was not optimum, as "a Yale degree meant one thing for a white man and another for a black." In short, he was presumed to have gotten his degree through affirmative action and lowered standards. His Daddy's teachings of hard work and independence caused him to seek solutions for his people that did not lead to dependence on the government or, more especially, white liberals.

Perhaps the least interesting part of Thomas's narrative is his early life as a young lawyer, husband, and father. You can practically sense the man's frustration in the lack of challenges. He got his first break from a fellow "Yalie" John Danforth, who was Attorney General in Missouri and who would eventually become a U.S. Senator and prominent defender of Thomas in his later career. He was often in difficult financial straits, and eventually moved on to Monsanto to earn some serious money, which he came to call the "golden handcuffs." He seems to have reached the conclusion that money was not everything and so took the chance on a career in Washington as a legislative aide to Danforth.

Life in Washington was not much better for Thomas than it had been in Missouri. His financial troubles continued, as did his marital and drinking problems. Most of his money seemed to go to pay for his son's private school education, as he refused to put him into public school. The marriage ended, and Thomas moved in with a friend until he was given custody of his son, at which point he got his own place and more debt. Civil servants must not make a whole lot--and Washington, DC, is NOT a cheap place to live.

Thomas's professional career eventually headed in the right direction, as he became, incongruously for a black man at the time, a political appointee in the Reagan Administration's Department of Education. He also acquired the friendship of several eminent black conservatives, including Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Juan Williams. Thomas seems to have been drawn to Reagan's philosophy because of his desire to get government out of black people's lives and increase their independence. It was in the Department of Education that Thomas also first met Anita Hill, who in Thomas's book comes across as an ambitious social and professional climber.

Reagan himself asked Thomas to take over the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was a shambles. "Keep it off the front page," was his only order. It was during this time that Thomas's Daddy died. With increasing problems in his agency and his grandfather's death weighing heavily upon him, Thomas decided to straighten out his life. He quit drinking. He ran in a marathon. He returned to the Church. And most importantly, he made peace with his grandfather and committed himself to living by his rough-hewn, hardworking ideals.

Thomas's career in EEOC is filled with a variety of bureaucratic and political problems that can only be interesting to someone who has worked in or fought a federal agency. Suffice to say, by the end of his tenure, Thomas had cleaned up the agency's performance and even its office space. Anita Hill followed him here, too, managing to continue pushing for career advancement. Thomas leaves open the question of whether Hill was glomming onto him to advance her professional career or if she was interested in him personally as a single man. However, she threw a tantrum when someone else was promoted into a position she felt she should have gotten. Thomas did the honorable thing and helped get her a teaching job back in her home state of Oklahoma. Hill was only a minor part of Thomas's life at this point. He was more concerned with fighting bad perceptions of EEOC in the media as well as fighting ingrained perceptions from civil rights leaders and reporters that Reagan was a racist and that any black man who worked for him had to be delusional somehow.

As Reagan's second term came to an end, Thomas met Virginia Lamp, a corporate lobbyist. He didn't believe he would marry a white woman, but he found that they were personally compatible. She would prove to be an important support for him in the next phase of his career as a judge.

Thomas apparently didn't have a plan for his career after EEOC. Instead, political friends and allies provided one for him: Judge on the DC Circuit Court, a path that would eventually lead to his nomination by George H. W. Bush to become a Supreme Court Justice. I find this somewhat hard to believe; you don't get that far in Washington without being fairly driven and self-aware.

The last 100 pages cover Thomas's brief stint on the DC Circuit, Bush Sr.'s invitation, and the subsequent hearings that made Thomas and Hill infamous. Thomas does not shade his anger at these proceedings, nor does he spare himself from self-recrimination as he was torn apart in the press. What Thomas provides here is a painful, first-person narrative of what it's like to be the target of a media smear job in Washington: his need to hide, his gratification at the support he got from friends and strangers, and his utter outrage as Hill's accusations were leaked and threatened to delay his confirmation. This is the Clarence Thomas most of us know best: the serious, indignant man vigorously protesting his "high-tech lynching" before the Senate and the media.

It is odd to me how both sides of that political fight ended up getting what they wanted. The liberals got a poster child for sexual harassment (Anita Hill) who, according to at least one of my former liberal friends, got Bill Clinton elected. The conservatives got a hard-nosed, precedent-minded judge on the Supreme Court.

Clarence Thomas's personal story is worth reading, if only because I'm not likely to ever read it in a positive light in the mainstream press. It helps provide some insight, though not much, into how Thomas thinks about the law and its purposes. History will tell us how he performs for the Court. He will be a fixture there for some time to come. Still, there is something bloodless about Thomas's narrative. His prose doesn't become seriously passionate until dealing with his Supreme Court confirmation, perhaps because those memories are freshest for him. I would have enjoyed more insights into his grandfather and the lessons he learned in Georgia. I would also have appreciated more insight into some of his philosophy/thinking. In any case, you can get a decent idea of the man from the book: he is serious, private, and hard working. It might need to be left to others to reveal the man beneath the armor.

Silly and Intriguing Thoughts Floating in the Public Square

First, I have this comment from a DJ on a local Huntsville radio station:

I'm tired of all this political stuff. I wish we just had a king who could decree cool stuff.

Okay, fine. Let's renounce the American Revolution, offer fealty to Queen Elizabeth II, and give up on the whole independence thing.

Comment from Rush Limbaugh listener:

We've got people who are Republican in name only. We've got two candidates now, Huckabee and McCain, who have the same mind-set as the Democrats, but they're on the Republican ticket -- and they're taking this down to a one-party system. I think that's the most dangerous in the world. That is more dangerous than just the Democratic Party, if you only have one party.

This one is a little smarter. The "neocon" revolution has undone the small-government nature of the Republican party. The neocons agreed with Ronald Reagan's belief in American exceptionalism and a strong national defense. However, these disenchanted former Democrats were still big-government types. In a sense, the Neocon Revolution has combined the worst of both parties: excessive spending on domestic spending plus excessive spending on the military. And so we got George W. Bush, who spent domestically like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, but also got tied up in a semi-unpopular war, like LBJ. In any case, we now have Republicans governing like Democrats used to, and Democrats governing like softish Trotskyites.

Did the country really move to the right? Maybe for six years (1994-2000). With Bush's election, Republican domestic spending went through the roof, and then we got the Bush Doctrine, which is an extension of the Clinton Doctrine, which stated:

[That] the United States would forcefully intervene to prevent human rights abuses when it can do so without suffering substantial casualties

That is already a violation of the concept of non-intervention in other nations' internal affairs (if you're a believer in the Prime Directive). The Bush Doctrine pushed the envelope a little farther, believing, in the light of 9/11:

that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a threat to the security of the United States

Both of these doctrines are inherently imperial. Neither is necessarily in our national interest if we continue to define ourselves as a republic. A republic doesn't get involved in the internal affairs and arrangements of other nations until and unless its own people or specific interests are being harmed. Open-ended mandates like "human rights" or "terrorism" are excuses to invade worse and worse pieces of real estate for less and less important reasons.

Limited-government types are a vanishingly rare breed. And if John McCain gets elected as a Republican, they will become even more so. Regardless of the party, we are moving more and more toward centralized control of our economy and society from Washington. And more's the pity: I've lived there, and aside from snobbery and expensive real estate, I can't quite understand what else the town has to offer.

In previous eras, imperial nations took booty or other important resources from conquered nations in order to pay for the troops that invaded or glorious monuments at home. We're more enlightened than that, of course, because despite the "war for oil" in Iraq, we are actually paying MORE for the commodity we supposedly went to war to liberate. We haven't stolen precious metals or works of art to pay our troops--though I understand the petrodollars we captured from Saddam Hussein's palace did go to the Iraqi people. How, exactly, are we benefitting from being an empire? That sort of "incompetent empire" (as Jerry Pournelle would call it) cannot last long. Eventually we'll start invading countries and demanding something of them--soldiers, money, or resources--to justify to Americans why they're binding their sons to exile in strange and godforsaken lands. And, of course, once we've given up all pretense of ruling the world for its own good, but instead ruling it for ours, the days of the empire will be numbered.

In any case, one-party rule is not far away, and we should be aware of the consequences.

Voting Time, Book Review: Why We Whisper

Tomorrow is Stupor Twosday, which means I've got a primary vote to make. My voting choices are being clarified by my free-time reading. For instance, I'm still in the process of reading Why We Whisper, which is all about the cultural issues Republicans fight for and why those of us who care about such issues often shut up rather than fight about it because we don't want to get tarred and feathered in the left-leaning media. You know the old saws: if you don't want your young children to be taught about homosexuality, you're a homophobe. If you don't want single moms to continue having children out of wedlock, you're being discriminatory. If you don't want people from Mexico sneaking into the country illegally, you're a racist. So rather than endure all that bilge, private citizens without the ACLU's deep pockets and fire-breathing lawyers just keep their voices down and let their opinions be known on election day.

I suppose I fall under that category--part of the "Silent Majority," who expects people to act decently, but doesn't feel like shoving it down their throats. Nor do I particularly want someone else's lifestyle shoved down my throat. This is the sort of thinking that leads me to being Libertarian in peacetime.

Conservative libertarians like me deceive themselves on this point: "Live and let live" doesn't work in an environment where the marketplace of ideas has no supervising authority. This is why conservatives are so fond of cultural power of churches and religious authorities. Despite my liberal friends' belief that Bush, et al., are trying to build a theocracy, the truth is something far different. If
many different churches and synagogues are allowed to hold sway in the field of public opinion and the result is a more moralistic citizenry, then the government doesn't have to be as large or intrusive when it comes to regulating behavior. If government does offer any moral guidance by passing laws on personal behavior, like DUI, drug use, sexual behavior, etc., it is still likely to have lower standards than Judeo-Christianity, and people are more likely to fear ostracism or social stigma from poor behavior than they would fear the civil law. Our Founders firmly believed that the United States would only function if its people were moral people of faith. However, America doesn't function that way anymore.

Liberalism doesn't intrude so much on social behavior. In fact, they seem to want as few laws and restraints as possible on personal behavior, as well as an end to religion-based forces like ostracism, shame, and stigma. Moral power, in this view, is not as important as legal power. That is why it is so important for the liberal side to maintain control of the legislature and the courts. If there is no God, as some would have it, there is no God-based morality. If there is no God-based morality, then rule-making is left to the State, and so it becomes very important to have control of the State.

Which brings me back to my conundrum. My political, economic, and moral views are conservative. I prefer limited government, low taxes, and a general moral restraint of the public. The problem is that most of the presidential candidates in the GOP don't fit all of those categories.

Morally, I'd probably vote with Huckabee, but his weak stance on immigration and his willingness to raise taxes don't thrill me. Economically and politically, I like Ron Paul, but he doesn't take the War on Terror seriously and wants to pull out of Iraq, even if we're on the way to military victory there. McCain takes the war in Iraq seriously, but enjoys voting against political and moralistic conservatism to win points with the media and the Beltway people. That leaves Mitt Romney, who's a relative unknown. He has no objection to moralistic rhetoric--his speech on religion was brilliant, in my opinion. I have no idea what his thoughts are on the war, but I can only hope, as a businessman, that he'd favor low taxes, a favorable regulatory environment, and less government spending. If the libertarians could somehow convince me that people would behave better in a less-regulated environment, I might be inclined to buy their arguments. If the moralistic Republicans were more serious about spending less, I might have more faith in their willingness to return to a more restrained State.

Yep--it's gonna be an interesting vote for me tomorrow. When it's all over, my vote will only be a whisper, but it will be cast freely by a man with a clear conscience.