After all, political correctness is/was in many ways an attempt by the puritan left to reinvent Victorian morality without any reference to God or religion or tradition, rooting it instead in victimology and neo-Romanticism.

Campaign finance 'reform' holds that only 'legitimate' voices can be heard in a democracy, which should be repugnant to the crowd that usually waxes pious about First Amendment rights. ... The notion that, politically or legally, only some people have the 'right' to say something during an election runs completely counter to the core intent of the First Amendment. But, hey, what right do I have to say that?

[E]ditors exist [because] most people don't have time to rummage through vast piles of hay for the specific needles they're looking for; we want professional needle-finders.

First Amendment absolutists think it's outrageous whenever a strip club is banned, but the same people have no problem with keeping Wal-Mart or McDonald's out of their town or banning cigarette advertising.

God's people, (Howell Raines' sneering phrase) had poured forth from their tin shanties and revival halls carrying a jug of moonshine in one hand and a few rattlesnakes in the other to put their kin in the White House with indoor plumbing. (describing New Yorkers' view of the 2004 election)

If we say that anyone who "moralizes" must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.

I had to listen to Susan Sarandon "Hollywood's Patron Saint of Sore Losers" explain that maybe Kerry really did win and that some grassy-knoll Republicans absconded with the election.

Liberals are ... the status-quo based community. They wish to stand athwart history yelling "Stop" -- in some rare cases, even when history is advancing liberalism in tyrannical lands. The Buckleyite formulation of standing athwart history yelling "Stop" was aimed at a world where the rise of Communism abroad and soft-liberalism at home were seen as linked trends. Today, liberals yell "Stop" almost entirely because they don't enjoy being in the backseat. If they cannot drive, no one can.

Liberty has turned into licentiousness, and tolerance for dissenters has become little more than rank relativism and nihilism. All perspectives are equally valid, which means no perspective is truly valid.

like it everybody stopped believing in God tomorrow." The honest ones shudder at the bloodshed that would follow such an "awakening" and argue instead for a slower process of revelation -- or is that de-revelation?

Many libertarians and free-market conservatives are so in love with the free market they seem to think anything it produces is better than what it replaced. Too many wonderful restaurants, bakeries and other downtown businesses have been replaced with schlock for me to believe that. I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that free enterprise will result in "bad" things, as I see them.

[P]oliticians like John Kerry ... proudly shift their opinions based upon the most convenient way of avoiding tough decisions, calling their zigs 'nuance' and their zags 'sophistication,' promising to 'stay the course' only if it's plotted as a U-turn."

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster -- especially if some nations are not democracies.

The same people who despise the federal and republican aspects of the United States -- states' rights, the electoral college, indirect elections, etc. -- will swoon over the moral authority of UN 'votes' criticizing the United States. This is like having a gang of criminals 'vote' on which old lady they're going rob and kill and then, looking at the corpse, say, 'Well, it was a democratic decision'.

What has offended the Left since Marx, and American liberalism since Dewey, is the notion that moral authority should be derived from anyplace other than the state or "the people" (conveniently defined as citizens who vote liberal). Voting on values not sanctified by secular priests is how they define "ignorance."

Among the finest new writers around, funny, biting, and intelligent. The one guy who seems big enough to fill Mr. Buckley's shoes.