Thoughts on Gay Marriage

Marriage, as it was traditionally understood, constituted the healthiest, safest and most natural way for the human race to procreate, survive and prosper.

For more than four millennia, marriage has been understood as a sacred union of one man and one woman – virtually everywhere in the world, in almost all societies. The family that resulted was viewed as the fundamental unit of society, whose main purpose was to create an environment in which children could be conceived, nurtured and raised to succeed their elders as adult members of society. The arrangement was rarely, if ever, questioned. Marriage, as it was traditionally understood, constituted the healthiest, safest and most natural way for the human race to procreate, survive and prosper.

This is not to say that the phenomenon of homosexuality has not existed since the dawn of humanity. While celebrated in some ancient cultures, it was more commonly viewed as an aberration. The homosexual act was labeled an abomination in biblical times; those who perpetrated such acts were viewed with pity, sometimes scorn. The idea that a homosexual couple could provide a nurturing home for children did not arise.

In more recent times, homosexuality has been considered more an abnormality than a sin, unnatural rather than criminal, sometimes as an illness. But in the more enlightened era in which we find ourselves now, it is treated as an “alternate lifestyle,” well within the bounds of normality. Maltreatment of homosexuals is considered to be as loathsome as mistreatment of women, minorities, disabled persons, religious people or senior citizens. Moreover, having arrived at this progressive viewpoint, it follows that there is absolutely no reason not to allow – even to encourage – homosexual marriage and the parenting of children by same sex couples. The common wisdom of four thousand years has been deemed WRONG.

But gay marriage flies in the face of human nature. It is not natural. Even if that were so, say proponents, there is no reason to prohibit it. Well, yes there is. One cannot render something natural if it is inherently not. One cannot declare something possible when it is manifestly not. If a man has the misfortune to be born blind, he is not going to play shortstop for the NY Yankees. If a woman has a cleft palette, she is not going to sing Puccini at the Met. If a person is nervous and easily excitable, that person will not be invited to join the bomb disposal squad.

Well, if a man lies with another male, rather than a female, he is not going to produce a baby. The latter combination, when it occurs under the rubric of normal marriage, is, according to the accepted wisdom of all mankind stretching back through the ages, the natural and right way to structure a family for the preservation of the species. Artificially declaring that unnatural alliances – such as gay unions, polygamy or man-child love groupings – constitute equally valid forms of marriage is the height of human arrogance and folly. It represents one more nail in the coffin of Western Civilization – indeed of civilization itself.

The key feature of American civilization – or the American experiment, as it is commonly known – is the establishment and preservation of individual liberty. Within the bounds of the rule of law and without doing any harm to fellow citizens, Americans are free to pursue their own destiny – economically, culturally and politically. That freedom guarantees the individual the right to pursue his sexuality with members of the same sex if he so chooses.

Similarly, an individual is free to be a pacifist who will not take up arms under any circumstances. But that does not change the accumulated wisdom of centuries, which teaches that evil lurks in the world, evil forces sometimes threaten peace-loving peoples and that if the latter do not defend themselves, they run the risk of death and destruction.

An individual is free to be an atheist. But that does not change the accumulated wisdom of centuries, which teaches that without the moral laws that arise from religious belief, a free people cannot govern itself and its society will eventually degenerate into tyranny or anarchy.

A young person is free to declare his independence from his family. But that does not change the accumulated wisdom of centuries, which teaches that a child’s ability to make reasoned and sensible decisions is not equal to that of his parents, and that the best environment for growth from childhood to adulthood is in the bosom of a loving family.

Well, the accumulated wisdom of centuries also teaches that the institution of marriage between one man and one woman is the fundamental building block of a healthy society – for nurturing children, for building strong and stable communities, and for respecting the moral laws that undergird a free society. The legalization of homosexual marriage is a blow – perhaps a fatal blow – to the classic institution of marriage. We undertake it at our peril.
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This article also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative at:

The Coming Decline of the Academic Left*

It is no secret that what passes for an education at most of the nation’s colleges and universities is suspiciously akin to indoctrination. An asterisk: With the exception of a few areas – specifically, climate and the environment, certain fields within biology and medicine, history of science and the interaction between science and public policy – the rot that infects the rest of academia has been averted in science and engineering schools.[1] A student who seeks a higher education in the unsullied areas of science and engineering can obtain truly the finest technical education that can be found on our planet at innumerable universities throughout the United States.

But when surveying the remaining disciplines in academia, as well as the administrative structures that direct the nation’s academic enterprise, one can say that today’s students are subject there to a less than subtle, mind-numbing, conformist indoctrination. Numerous polls conducted in humanities and social sciences departments – at elite, State and minor universities – reveal a stunning skew between liberals and conservatives at least as distorted as 90%-10%. The inherent bias spills over into classroom presentations, selection of curricula and grading. Moreover, it has been thus for at least two generations.

The consequences of this warp in the political spectrum in academia are well known. The students are taught, with conviction and certainty, that:

  • The United States is a deeply flawed nation – stained by a legacy of slavery, discrimination against women, genocidal policies toward the indigenous population, unjustified foreign wars, homophobia and persecution of minorities.
  • America’s unfair system of rapacious capitalism creates unacceptable distortions in income distribution, punishes low-income workers in favor of well-heeled corporate moguls and unscrupulous entrepreneurs, and needlessly subjects the economy to convulsive upheavals such as the 2007-08 financial crisis.
  • The US ignores environmental concerns and is the world’s leasing abuser of fossil-fuel sources of energy.
  • The US’s adherence to Judeo-Christian religious principles and values is no longer – if it ever was – appropriate, and a secular, humanist ethic should rightfully take its place.
  • There is no meaningful American culture; American exceptionalism is a myth; and America is not a “shining city on a hill,” nor a beacon of liberty. Rather it is a multicultural society in which different value systems have equal merit, just one more country among the nations of the Earth.
  • The Constitution is as antiquated as the Bible; neither provides a roadmap for the country’s destiny.
  • The notion of rugged individualism is nonsense; we strive for a society of equals, guided by a benevolent and powerful government that wisely charts a proper course for our citizens.

In short, the only thing exceptional about America is that it has resisted the transformation that European nations have undergone into social welfare states. The above interpretation of the “true” nature of America is widely taught at American universities – sometimes subtly, more commonly openly – as if it is gospel. More insidiously, despite the university’s reputation as a place where a student is exposed to numerous different ideas, the “wisdom” encapsulated above is passed on as if it is irrefutably established truth and students risk grade and opprobrium if they challenge it. This smells more like indoctrination than education to me.

However, the nation’s colleges might be on the cusp of a major crisis which could pose a serious challenge to the leftist domination of campus. It is my purpose here to explain why and what the consequences might be. Actually, the ingredients of the crisis are well known:

  • The graduates of our social sciences and humanities programs are increasingly found wanting in the workplace. Unless they can find employment in a leftist dominated milieu (e.g., government, academia, public sector union, media conglomerate), the American business world finds them ill-equipped to function successfully in what remains of the US entrepreneurial society.
  • The costs of a university indoctrination – er, that is, education – have skyrocketed. In light of the previous bullet, consumers – i.e., the students’ parents – find it increasingly hard to justify the expense.
  • Intense criticism of the faculty is on the rise: they can’t teach; or what they teach is garbage or propaganda; they’re too busy with their “research”; and they are overpaid.
  • Administrative policies make no sense – multiculturalism trumps achievement, political correctness outweighs impartiality.
  • Most damaging, our universities, after a prolonged period of indoctrination, return students to their parents in a form that parents cannot recognize – their opinions, values and behavior have been altered beyond repair. (To be fair, it is encouraging that a not insignificant percentage of college grads manage to resist the brainwashing on campus.)

How are the leftist dominated American universities responding to this crisis? Simple answer: the same as the leftists running our government – namely, double down on the very policies that have caused the crisis in the first place. In this strategy, there is an eerie resemblance to the tactics of the Obama administration. Exactly as our federal government is bankrupting itself by its unsustainable tax and spending profligacy, university presidents keep raising tuition and fees in order to vigorously pursue their expansive and flawed policies. The addiction to spending is the same in both enterprises, but universities can’t print money like the feds. So instead they hike tuition, beg for more financial assistance from federal and state governments, and prostitute themselves in the search for corporate and government grants. As for the tyrannical, leftist mindset that dominates the humanities and social sciences, it grows more and more entrenched.

But people are fed up. In the same way that frustrated citizens rose up to challenge the profligate spending of federal and state governments, parents and students will rise up to protest the out of control spending and leftward drift of the nation’s universities. Let’s call it the Stench Revolution – a revolt against the foul propaganda that emanates from leftist humanities and social sciences departments. The conservative political revolt in America against the decades-old leftward drift of the nation – typified by the TEA Party – has resulted in some signature successes: more robust and influential conservative think tanks (Heritage, Cato, Manhattan Institute); talk radio; Fox News; grassroots public organizations like Americans for Progress or the Club for Growth. I predict that an analogous movement will occur in regard to academia. The result will be: the growth of conservative academic online sites (like this one); more balanced professional organizations like the NAS; more Hillsdale and Grove City Colleges; more public figures like David Horowitz and Dennis Prager who expose the treachery on campus. It will be a long, laborious process, but there is no alternative if traditionalists wish to restore our universities to their former state as bastions of truth and knowledge, which is disseminated objectively.
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* This essay appeared in the Manhattan Institute’s online journal, “Minding the Campus” at: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/05/the_coming_decline_of_the_academic_left.html

[1] Actually, there are other corners of academia that have also eluded the indoctrination mode to a substantial extent, e.g., business schools, professional schools and agricultural schools.
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Japan’s Nuclear Power Hari Kari

Any discussion of Japan and nuclear power is complicated by that country’s history as the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack. That event continues to haunt the venerable Pacific nation. This is an immutable truth that one must accept regardless of which side one is on concerning the legitimacy of the US attack 67 years ago.

That said, the Japanese nation nevertheless staked much of its economic destiny on nuclear power. Beginning more than four decades ago, Japan deployed over 50 nuclear power plants to feed the energy needs of its densely packed population. Very limited in domestic fossil fuel sources and running one of the world’s leading economies, the country’s reliance on substantial nuclear power facilities made eminent sense.

And for over 40 years, this decision redounded to the benefit of the nation and its people. But alas, nuclear tragedy struck again in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The reactor at Fukushima was damaged and a partial meltdown ensued. People died, land areas became contaminated and the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants was called into question.

Japan instituted a series of rigorous tests that all of its plants would have to pass (to ensure that they could withstand quakes and tsunamis) before they would be allowed to continue operating. One by one, reactors have been halted to perform the tests. Not one has been restarted, and recently the last operational reactor was taken offline. There isn’t a single nuclear power plant operating in Japan today; and it is unclear when, if ever, any will start back up.

Here are some important points to keep in mind:

  • The overwhelming percentage of the casualties last spring resulted from the quake and the tsunami, not the reactor meltdown.
  • Clearly, the Fukushima plant was not subjected to the most rigorous safety tests that could have been applied. But there is no evidence that any other Japanese plant was in danger of a serious malfunction. Moreover, none of Japan’s numerous, previous earthquakes had caused a problem for any of their plants.
  • Many nations around the world continue to rely on nuclear power. France gets more than 75% of its electricity from it. At its height, Japan got 30%.
  • Non-nuclear forms of energy are dangerous too; see: Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal and all the eagles that are getting sliced and diced by wind turbines.
The anti-nuclear activists have seemingly won the day in Japan. The result will be a country trapped in the misery of imported energy, drastically increased fuel costs, a diminished economy and a commensurate loss of independence. (We in the US know about such things.) Japan had come to a modus vivendi in which it has been able to harness the type of energy that had previously been used against it. The result was a peaceful, economic and efficient use of nuclear power. Could it have been done with better safety and controls? Absolutely. But by allowing the tsunami tragedy to enable the anti-nuke activists to subvert the industry, the Japanese are punishing themselves in a misbegotten attempt to expunge modern and past demons.
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This article also appeared in The American Thinker at:

Another Home Run by Mark Levin

A Review of Mark Levin’s Ameritopia

Mark Levin has knocked it out of the park again. Following his 2009 blockbuster best seller, Liberty and Tyranny, Levin’s latest book, Ameritopia, is another brilliant depiction of the stark differences confronting America as it chooses between liberty and tyranny. Levin’s 2009 book adopted a political/cultural perspective. Through an examination of signature issues – such as the Constitution, federalism, the free market, the welfare state, environmentalism, immigration and faith – Levin explained the disjoint points of view of those who favor liberty as opposed to those who prefer equality, security and “fairness.” He described how the latter inevitably leads to tyranny (following on the ideas of several potent thinkers, most notably, Friedrich Hayek). Not surprisingly, Levin identified those in the former camp as devotees of conservatism, while those in the latter represent liberalism or progressivism or – the more charged term that Levin has helped to popularize – statism.

In his new book, Levin adopts a more philosophical, even spiritual tone. He seeks to identify the underlying philosophy that explains the gravitation of an individual toward either of these epic movements. What fundamental beliefs or inclinations, he asks, impel one to the statist point of view, or alternatively to the viewpoint in which liberty is to be cherished above all else in the political realm? For the former, Levin asserts that the fundamental philosophy that underlies the progressive/statist mindset is utopianism. The statist believes that mankind’s nature is not immutable, but rather perfectible and that society can continuously progress to higher states of equality, fairness and social justice – culminating in a utopian vision of human and societal perfection. This trek must be led by wise experts, embodied in a benevolent, enlightened and extremely powerful government that guides – even if at times, forcefully – the society and its people toward a state of perfection.

Levin identifies four primary sources from which statists derive their utopian inspiration: Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. In an amazing tour de force of historical and philosophical analysis, Levin relates the ideas expressed in these four utopian visions to the current thinking of statists such as those that populate the Obama administration.

Those who prize liberty over social progress are not grounded in the ideas of equality, fairness and social justice. Rather they see humans as flawed creatures who over millennia of experimentation have learned through vast experience the best methods to help them achieve a life of freedom, opportunity and prosperity. In particular, they emphasize faith, family, community, impartial rule of law, free enterprise and above all a strictly limited government that rules purely at the consent of the governed and whose primary (and, in some sense, sole) responsibility is to protect the people’s natural rights – which are inalienable and granted by Nature and Nature’s God, not by government.

Levin cites many philosophers who are the source of these ideas – e.g., Edmund Burke, Frédéric Bastiat, William Blackstone, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; but he reserves a special place for Montesquieu, Locke and Tocqueville. Once again, through a brilliant historical analysis, Levin traces how these seminal thinkers and espousers of liberty influenced America’s founding and its history, and how they continue to inspire modern conservatives.

Levin writes with great force, clarity and conviction. Here is just a small sample of some of his most profound comments:

…the individual’s right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the right to benefit from the fruits of his own labor. As the individual’s time on earth is finite, so too is his labor. The illegitimate denial or diminution of his labor – that is, the involuntary deprivation of the private property he accumulates from his intellectual and/or physical efforts – is a form of servitude and, hence, immoral.

…America today is not strictly a constitutional republic, because the Constitution has been and continues to be easily altered by a judicial oligarchy that mostly enforces, if not expands, federal power. It is not strictly a representative republic, because so many edicts are produced by a maze of administrative departments that are unknown to the public and detached from its sentiment. It is not strictly a federal republic, because the states that gave the central government life now live at its behest. America is becoming, and in significant ways has become, a post-constitutional, democratic utopia of sorts. It exists behind a Potemkin-like image of constitutional republicanism. Its essential elements and unique features are being ingurgitated by an insatiable federal government that seeks to usurp and displace the civil society.

The Founders would be appalled at the nature of the federal government’s transmutation and the squandering of the American legacy. The federal government has become the nation’s largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Its size and reach are vast. Its interventions are illimitable.

[This] is to endorse the magnificence of the American founding. The American founding was an exceptional exercise in collective human virtue and wisdom – a culmination of thousands of years of experience, knowledge, reason and faith. The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable societal proclamation of human rights, brilliant in its insight, clarity and conciseness. The Constitution of the United States is an extraordinary matrix of governmental limits, checks, balances, and divisions, intended to secure for posterity the individual’s sovereignty as proclaimed in the Declaration.

This is the grand heritage to which every American is born. It has been characterized as “the America Dream,” “the American experiment,” and “American exceptionalism.” The country has been called “the Land of Opportunity,” “the Land of Milk and Honey,” and “a Shining City on a Hill.” It seems unimaginable that a people so endowed by Providence, and the beneficiaries of such unparalleled human excellence, would choose or tolerate a course that ensures their own decline and enslavement, for a government unleashed on the civil society is a government that destroys the nature of man.

Levin writes beautifully, but also somewhat pessimistically. He ended the first book with what he called a Conservative Manifesto. This was an ambitious program through which conservatives could recapture the national conversation from the progressive/statist domination under which the USA has suffered for 50-100 years. In fact, Levin outlines scores of concrete steps that he felt needed to be taken not just to control the conversation, but indeed to restore the nation to its founding principles of liberty and thereby prevent the seemingly inexorable slide into a statist tyranny toward which he saw it plunging. He ended with a quote from Reagan and a plea:

President Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.” We conservatives need to get busy.

The unmistakable tone though was that he expected the people to actually take up the task; furthermore, he was fairly optimistic that conservatives would triumph.

I fear that in the three years between the two books, Levin’s optimism as to whether his manifesto can or will be implemented has waned. Hs writing skills and keen insight remain intact. But his assessment of America’s future is bleaker. He again concludes with a quote from Reagan, this time followed by a question:

…in his first inaugural address President Reagan told the American people: If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we have achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom has been at times high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” So my fellow countrymen, which do we choose, Ameritopia or America?

Alas, previous words betray his concern at the answer.

The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced, and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal government? Have the Pavlovian appeals to radical egalitarianism, and the fomenting of jealousy and faction through class warfare and collectivism, conditioned the people to accept or even demand compulsory uniformity as just and righteous? Is it accepted and routine that the government has sufficient license to act whenever it claims to do so for the good of the people and against the selfishness of the individual?

No society is guaranteed perpetual existence. But I have to believe that the American people are not ready for servitude, for if this is our destiny, and the destiny of our children, I cannot conceive that any people, now or in the future, will successfully resist it for long. I have to believe that this generation of Americans will not condemn future generations to centuries of misery and darkness.

Perhaps if enough people read Ameritopia and take it to heart, Levin’s implicit pessimism will prove unfounded.
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This review also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative at:
as well as in The Land of the Free at:

Repairing Our Republic: Is Anyone Serious About the Effort?

The reasons for the dismay of those on the right are easy to state. In short, they see an ongoing, and in some ways, accelerating erosion of the political philosophy and cultural mores that strongly defined the nation from the eighteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth.

When reporting the results of exit polls in Republican presidential primaries, the media often offers up the numbers according to various groupings. Common categories that are meant to identify the different components of the right wing of the Republican Party include: Tea Party supporters, those who consider themselves very conservative and Evangelical Christians. Many in these far from disjoint camps, as well as some libertarians, are of the opinion that the fundamental political/cultural structure of the country is broken. This is a serious accusation – one that is likely to be ridiculed by those on the left and which, in addition, will probably mystify those in the middle.

The purpose here is to explain why those who believe that the Republic is in need of repair feel as they do; then to describe why liberals consider the charge ridiculous, and also what accounts for the puzzlement in the middle. Lastly, the question of whether any conservative political or cultural leaders are really attempting to change the country’s progressive politics and corrupted culture is taken up.

The reasons for the dismay of those on the right are easy to state. In short, they see an ongoing, and in some ways, accelerating erosion of the political philosophy and cultural mores that strongly defined the nation from the eighteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. The original political philosophy emphasized individual liberty as the raison d’être for the US, to be achieved via: separation and strict enumeration of powers in a representative, but sharply limited government; equality before the law; federalism; and sovereignty of the people, not the government. The cultural mores embraced: free markets; American exceptionalism; strong families and communities; pursuit and promotion of virtues like modesty, honesty, industriousness and tolerance; strong morals grounded in religious faith; and rugged individualism.

This entire program has been under relentless assault by progressives for a century and – sad to say – they have been remarkably successful in undermining it. Those who believe that the original political/cultural structure of the nation has been drastically altered see, in its stead: a gargantuan federal government that is bankrupting the nation via profligate, irresponsible spending and crippling its markets via obtrusive, irrational and counterproductive regulation; liberty sacrificed before the alter of equality and fairness; the vassalization of the States by an exceedingly powerful central government; infidelity to the Constitution; a land of opportunity morphing into an entitlement society; the denigration of American history; the destruction of the family through the encouragement of promiscuity, out of wedlock conception and same-sex marriage; marginalization of religion and its virtual banishment from the national discourse. The list could be extended, but one can sum up with the observation that early twenty first century America looks less and less like the society envisioned by Locke, Montesquieu, Jefferson or Madison – to whose ideals we were faithful for more than a century – and more and more like a Euro-style, social welfare state in which a massive, benignly-intentioned, but tyrannical central government dominates the lives of its citizens. In the process, said government destroys liberty, hobbles the economy, weakens the nation’s defenses and corrupts the people’s morals. That is not the country for which our forefathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.

Any liberal who reads the preceding would deem its author at best sadly mistaken and at worst completely daft. Liberals/progressives are motivated by the conviction that while the society established by our Founders might have been appropriate for a small, agrarian, homogeneous country in the eighteenth century, it is completely inadequate for the governance of a third millennium nation that is vast, diverse and post-industrial. Anyway, the original structure was deeply flawed by its acquiescence to slavery, ill treatment of women, jingoistic patriotism and neglect of the downtrodden. The changes that the Progressive movement has brought to America have made it a fairer, more just and enlightened society. Conservatives indulge their reactionary fantasies when they envision a return to “founding principles.” Au contraire, we must strive to perfect America further by completing the progressive tasks left unfinished thus far.

And then there are those “in the middle” who either rue or are mystified by one or both of the two opposite points of view just enumerated. They consider hardcore conservatives or dyed-in-the-wool liberals to be extreme. They see some value – and much craziness – in both sides and feel that the correct course is to select what is beneficial to the country from each and disregard the rest.

The author considers himself on the right (not to mention in the right). I see the country’s structure as broken and I believe that the continuing progressive onslaught will eventually – if it has not already – destroy the constitutional republic established by the Founders. But in some ways my greatest scorn is reserved for the puzzled folks in the middle. The lefties have a clear vision of where they want to take the country. They are tragically wrong in their goals and it will be our ruination if they succeed. But they are clear-headed about their aims. The moderates, centrists and independents are, on the other hand, either confused, apathetic or inattentive. They try to tread a line in between traditionalists and radicals. But the visions of the left and right are irreconcilable and it is logically incoherent to attempt to blend them or cherry pick from between them. In fact, because the national conversation has been so skewed to the left for so long, the mystified middlemen wind up, in the end, the unwitting accomplices of the left in the implementation of the Progressive agenda. It is clearly, therefore, an urgent task for rightists to help the centrists to see the tea leaves as they truly are – and to convince them of the justice of the cause of restoring America’s original political/cultural structure.

So is that happening? Are there any conservative political or cultural leaders who see the situation clearly and are attempting to do something about it? Among the “final four,” not so much. Gingrich represents those who understand, but who are so undisciplined, quixotic or self-aggrandizing that they are willing to subvert the cause by sitting on the couch with Nancy Pelosi. Santorum represents those who are sincere, but also basically clueless about the opposition. If they gained influence and power, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. (OK, Santorum has dropped out; but “final three” is not so catchy.) Then there is Paul, who understands, but whose solutions only address half the problem. His policies in pursuit of the other half might make matters worse. Finally, Romney, an “establishment Republican,” might actually understand but fears that expressing such an understanding is neither a means to power nor a way to exercise it should he get it.

There are indeed some who are trying valiantly: Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint, Mike Pence among the politicians; various pundits like Rush Limbaugh; business executives such as the Koch brothers; entertainers like Jon Voight; and Foundation heads like Edwin Feulner (Heritage), Edward Crane (Cato) and Arthur Brooks (American Enterprise Institute). But I am not so sure that the people want to be led where these conservative leaders would take them. The Founders were great leaders. But they took the people where the people already wanted to go. If there is to be a conservative restoration, it can only come about if the people wish it. Unfortunately, for several generations, the people have been subjected to a progressive brainwashing by the mainstream media and government-controlled public schools. Perhaps that is where conservative leaders need to focus their efforts.