Taking Hillary Seriously

Peggy Noonan reminds us not to
underestimate
Hillary Clinton. She’s running for president, and
she’ll probably win. That’s the baseline that we should start from.

Mixing Religion and Politics

In this long article, Edward Feser
takes apart
the liberal demand to separate religion and politics.
The simple response is: You Can’t. Religion, broadly understood, means the attempt to understand the
reality of human existence and purpose. Politics must reflect some attempt to understand the world
and its meaning, otherwise it is simply aimless. What liberals are doing, of course, is a power play.
They want their religion to drive politics, not yours.

Democrats Worry About Catholics

Democrat consultants Stan Greenberg and Matt Hogan look at
erosion
in the Catholic vote for Democrats.
What they must do is “reach across to more traditional Catholics,” define themselves
as “the middle class party,” and “reassure broadly on values.” This sounds great,
but tell it to MoveOn.org. The Democratic base defines itself in opposition to all these themes, because
they are the defining themes of the Republican Party.

Cab Drivers are Giving Real-Estate Tips

Old Joe Kennedy knew that something was wrong when his shoe-shine boy started giving him stock tips in 1929. Cab drivers were giving stock tips in 1999. Now John Makin reports that cab drivers are giving real-estate tips in Florida. Alan Greenspan, can you spell “bubble?”

Steyn: It's Still Wrong

As usual, the incomparable Mark Steyn gets to the
heart
of the matter of the culture of life
vs. the culture of convenience. On Schiavo, he intones:
“it may be legal under Florida law for the state to order her to be starved to death. But it is still wrong.”

Clueless Old Europe

Enjoy these
delicious caricatures
of Americans from Stern, the German magazine: noble liberals
put up against wacko conservative nutters. Those crazy Europeans. One of these days their
mean-spirited ignorance is going to cost them.

Here Comes Polyamory

After mainstreaming the idea of gay marriage, the radical left is limbering up for the next stage: the mainstreaming
of polyamory. You girls will remember that: it used to be called polygamy. And the polyamorists
have found a bright,
intelligent Brit academic to do it for them, according to Stanley Kurtz. Her name is Elizabeth F. Emens.

“A whiz kid with a Ph.D. in English from Cambridge University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, Emens, who teaches the University of Chicago Law School, has published a major legal and cultural defense of polyamory (group marriage).”

In “Monogamy’s Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence,” she raises the idea of a
“disposition” towards polyamory similar to the disposition people have towards homosexuality, and
can thus call “a whole raft of laws into question — from marriage laws to partnership laws,
to zoning laws, to custody laws. All these laws, says Emens,
place unfair burdens on those with a ‘poly’ disposition.”

Now that we are beginning to read the
stories
of the real children of the Sixties, the children born
to the Sixties “kids,” we are beginning to see the other side of the counterculture: the
blighted lives, the neglect, the exposure to sexual predation that occurs in what we might call a
“diverse” sexual context, we are beginning to learn the hard way the reason the west has
developed the idea of monogamous marriage between an man and a woman. It’s about the children.
It’s startling to realize that there are brilliant whiz kid academics out there that
haven’t read the news yet, and that in consequence don’t seem to have a clue.