Month: March 2013

Virtue Losing to Liberty in Culture War

Buck Banks

Social conservatives are greatly outnumbered (a byproduct of having lost the culture war argument). We hear a lot about the supposed ‘three-legged-stool’ of the conservative movement, but in fighting the culture war, social conservatives are on their own. In fact, it’s wrong to think of this in terms of a left versus right paradigm. It would be better understood as part of the continuing struggle between virtue (as social conservatives define it) and liberty (defined by our modern secular society to mean the freedom to do whatever we want). In that light, liberty is murdering virtue.

— Matt Lewis, writing in the “Bullpen” column in The Week.

At Last: The Gay Agenda Explained

Trish

Interesting comments are sometimes left on our posts, although there can be a time delay between when the post is written and when comments appear. We assume this happens because someone was doing a search for a topic and up we popped.

So here’s a recent comment on an old post (May of 2011), from someone who signed his name “Matt Stone.” Matt finally explains the storied “gay agenda,” to which conservatives point. The subject of the post, from Jon Ponder, called, Guess What Percentage of Americans is Gay was that the estimates exaggerate the real number.

Matt starts his comment with a quote from the post.

“They claim it’s more like 2 percent — which prompts the question: If there are so few gay people, why all the fuss?”

Because in the late 70’s the gay community realized in order to gain legitimacy for their perversion they would have to re-brand their lifestyle from one governed by licentious behavior to one of social victimization.

[…]

George W. Bush ‘Disciplined,’ Not Just Dumb?

Buck Banks

He is like the most focused, disciplined guy. To imagine being a former president and not having an opinion on anything over the last four years, really? I mean, to have that discipline, to be respectful of the president that hasn’t been as respectful of him as he should have been? Man. I could have never done that.

— Jeb Bush, in a CNN interview, on his brother, former President George W. Bush.

George W. Bush Is the Most Expensive Ex-President

Buck Banks

$1.3 million

Amount the federal government spent on George W. Bush in 2012. That includes almost $400,000 for 8,000 square feet of office space and $85,000 in telephone costs, Politico reports. In total, the government “spent nearly $3.7 million on former presidents last year. That covers a $200,000 pension, compensation and benefits for office staff, and other costs like travel, office space and postage.

Radical Republicans Thwart Revitalization of the Party

Buck Banks

In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today. … The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.

— Pollster Andrew Kohut, writing in the Washington Post.