The Message

I don't want you to think that I suppose Republicans are any better. It's all just politics, and has little to do with character. Neither side is smarter or more moral in their individuals. Not in a subjective sense. Both sides stake out their issues, and think they do it for righteous reasons. That's not how it really is, but absolutes are trickier than one would suppose. Even gravity will get an argument.

I don't care about Republicans. It's the Stupid Party. Trust me, they will blow their seeming advantage, in the face of the Dem civil war going on right now. They'll find a way. No matter. Being right and prevailing are two different things.

Some of my good buddies were having one of those who would win conversations. Jet Li or Bruce Lee. Steven Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme. Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Rambo or Rocky. Puerto Rico or Hawaii. Lee Marvin comes out surprisingly well. He was mean. Y'see? It's not about being noble. Nobility loses, often. I've seen it too often to doubt it. A scummy man deserves no meaningful respect, but that has nothing to do with winning. To me that has to mean that there's something more important than winning. Not at all a practical position, but everyone who has spent more than a few minutes riffling these pages will understand that I am a fool.

Republicans stake out the pro-innocent life position. Unborn babies matter, murderers don't. That's my position. Excluding, or stipulating, the requisite provisos about gray areas. Democrats seem to think it's the other way around. I don't get that, but I'm not right because my conviction is held more firmly than theirs. I'm right only if there is a God, and if the unborn are human, and if innocence matters more than convenience. I frame the issue from my perspective. The other side would frame it differently.

Same thing with economic justice. What a term. I suppose that property rights matter, because they are the foundation of freedom and justice as the Western world has understood those ideas. We will exclude such abominations as slavery. Others suppose that such protean constructs as "fairness" are what matters. And they're right, in individual lives. But for social policy, which is what politics must be about, nothing so arbitrary will do. Justice must be blindfolded, and carry a sword. When the coercive confiscatory power of the state intrudes into matters of social engineering and wealth redistribution, I would err on the side of caution. We've seen what theory made real brings. Five-year Plans, which amount to genocide. The poor, per Jesus, will always be with us. Totalitarian Utopias should be a rare thing. So I see it.

Upshot is, in this most silly of silly seasons, it is a pleasure, for once, to see the Left tearing itself apart. We on this side of the aisle have watched in dismay as our indexterous emissaries betray our principles with their greed, incompetence and indolence. Now we get to see the phoniness of the puppet people on the sinister side. Hillary playing the hero. Obama claiming he was a professor when he was only a lecturer. And the elegant and vapid tapdance of a speech he gave about race -- this, from the non-race candidate. It's good times, sports fans.

Politics matters for hardly any reasons. We like to have opinions about things, so there's that. And it does have some effect on our lives -- like a storm system, five hundred miles away. It gives us a chance to reevaluate the evidence. Take Bush, for example. Now that the war is a non-newsworthy event, we can grow tired of him. He said today something about why he signed the "good law" for economic stimulus. Even I have to comment on the ineptitude of his oral formulations. It isn't proper that we should see so clearly into the way a man's brain works. It's like watching Obama dodge the issue, claiming his upper-middle class preacher has some special right to a racist anger stemming from his privileged formative years. The logic doesn't quite track. It's like Hillary pretending to be heroic, and a victim, and experienced. Y'see? It shouldn't be about seeing them trying to put ideas into our heads.

We all need help. Rugged Individualism is a nice theory, and I'm sure there are a few people who manage it. But most everyone gets married, or at least has a main squeeze. We need each other, and we need help. But I don't suppose we are entitled to everything that we need. The condemned man is not entitled to a heartbeat. None of us are, at the end. The whole universe is under a death sentence. Puts things in perspective, albeit a broad one. My point? Nobility is no objective virtue. Entirely subjective. Like love, and honesty, and gentleness. We don't value these things because other people value them. It is in us to value them. Or not.

Who would win in fight, a democrat or a republican? The democrat, because entropy is the most unambiguous of all laws.


J