Chirping Mutant Sectarians ... Add "from Mars" to the end and you have a great Pulp SF title. :-)

P.

LOL!!!

Maybe add "teenage" for additional box office draw....

:)

Extremely interesting again. And again dealing with a worthy adversary, this Professor Bainbridge, who, unlike so many others it seems, is not talking about the relatively transient and trivial issue of a Presidential election that is over and done with (as far as I'm concerned), but is instead addressing, though from an adversarial point of view, the eternal and crucial question of the relation of individual freedom to transcendent moral values.

I myself loved all three of those conservative books, Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind", James Burnham's "The Suicide of the West", and Whittaker Chambers's "Witness". All three were and are extremely profound. Their _styles_! (Perhaps that makes me, too, an unreadable and unedifying racist and imperialist, meandering and hallucinatory.)

I MUST also very strongly recommend my favorite of all of those books, Frank S. Meyer's "In Defense of Freedom". Indispensible for any libertarian, for any conservative, or any thinking man or woman. In that book, he addresses the question I named, the relation of individual freedom to virtue and transcendent values. And he gives the right answer, the only answer that can save freedom, virtue, values, and Western civilization.

Clarence E. Manion's "The Key to Peace: A Formula for the Perpetuation of Real Americanism" and E. Merrill Root's "America's Steadfast Dream" are also excellent, and also synthesize freedom with transcendence.

As to libertarian writers, the first that I encountered back in my high school days in the early 1970s were Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess, and, above all, Ayn Rand. I first encountered Rothbard and Hess in an anthology of American anarchist essays.

The first works I read of Rand were "Capitalism: THe Unknown Ideal" (I was a socialist back then and had no idea a capitalist could be idealistic) and "Anthem". Then, I read "The Fountainhead". Later, I read "Atlas Shrugged". Then, over the years and ever since then, all of her other works. My favorite of all of Rand's works is still "The Fountainhead", my favorite novel ever. Jeanine Ring and I both identify with Dominique.

I also read Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" and Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom". All of those writers led me away from socialism.

Earlier, I read Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West" and Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra", "Beyond Good and Evil", and other works, as well as discovering European Romanticism. All of that has drawn me to the Starboard side of most spectrums. MOST important of all, even before I slid into socialism in junior high school, was my discovery of ancient Egyptian mythology, and then other mythologies back at the end 4th grade. HAIL TO OSIRIS AND ISIS!!!!

The Mormon cricket is a little less cute when you find one crawling on your clothes, 'cause they are BIG suckers.

Steven, I am glad you respect Professor Bainbridge too. I also like Frank Meyer. I don't see why the disagreements between libertarians and social conservatives cannot be somewhat reconciled by mutual recognition of the need for limits on government.

BD -- What I REALLY like are the Jerusalem crickets!

http://homepage.mac.com/bugbob/askdoctorbug/stenopelmatus.html>http://homepage.mac.com/bugbob/askdoctorbug/stenopelmatus.html

Dear Eric:

Thank you!

Unfortunately, that's precisely where we can't agree. Certain limits on governnment both sides of the Right agree on, i.e., where it limits the Left's power. E.g., we can agree with men like Clayton Cramer in opposing gun control. We can agree to oppose Communist indoctrination in schools. Protecting certain property rights is another. Free exercise of religion, too, against enforced atheism. Things of that nature. We'll be able to hold the line on those issues, and possibly scale back some of the controls.

But, there really can be no limits on government if it reaches into my bedroom, or dictates what kind of books, films, Web sites, etc., I can look at, or who I can marry. Those are precisely the issues on which there is and can be no or very little agreement. Bork and Santorum and Keyes, Lou Sheldon and Robert Knight, and the like will never concede that we have any such rights. Their most basic moral premises are diametrically opposed to very idea of individual autonomy, particularly in any sexual sphere. It would be like trying to persuade a Maoist that capitalism is good, or a Nazi that the races should be allowed to intermarry.

Some traditional conservatives, who share much of their moral views on, e.g., homosexuality or pornography, but also genuinely value limited government, especially federalism, may agree to leave things to the states. I'm thinking of people like Bob Barr, for example. The John Birch Society also.

President Bush, while he supported "sodomy" laws while he was Governor of Texas, did not file a brief in the case of Lawrence and Garner vs. Texas, and he has since made clear statements that people have the right to privacy in their homes. He also agrees that states should recognize or be able to recognize civil unions. Cheney goes further in that direction. Grover Norquist, whose "leave it alone coalition" consists mainly of traditional Rightists like gun owners, land owners, and home-schoolers, praised the Supreme Court in Lawrence & Garner, saying that, in that case, homosexuals were the ultimate "leave us alone" people.

So, yes, it does seem that some modus vivendi can possibly be worked out between libertarians or individualists and traditionalists on the Right , though not with the radicals like Bork and Santorum.

Lord Pork Pork on the Port side is an enemy, but Lord Bork Bork is an even deadlier enemy on the Right. And the Right is where the power is, both in the halls of government and in the churches. He who writes the sermons writes the laws. Ultimately, the War is spiritual....