Senator, you’re no Ronald Reagan

In 1964, Ronald Reagan gave a speech that’s become known as “A Time for Choosing.” This speech was given at the 1964 Republican National Convention and it launched him into the national spotlight. It remains one of the most quoted speeches of all time, and for good reason. However, of all the truly amazing parts of the speech, there’s one line in particular that has always put chills down my spin.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

I’ll be thinking about Ronald Reagan’s words as I consider what the American Conservative Movement can do to recover from the Bush Administration.

A Time for Choosing may be viewed here

That’s just fine; that’s just one of my names

Imagine that you’re reading a book — maybe something sentimental — a story about a boy or girl during which bits and pieces of the character’s personality are revealed to you. You journey with the boy or girl as he or she goes through life-altering experiences. The dialogue is rich, poignant and strong. The description is vibrant.

Imagine watching the character’s  thought process evolve, eventually leading to a striking personality change.

Is it odd to wish for an earlier form of the character; the pre-change/alteration version of the character?

Is it so odd to grow attached to the character?

Is it odd to be a little sad when you realize the character you liked best won’t be coming back and isn’t re-creatable because it will never be possible to read the story with a fresh mind again?

The novel that’s raised these questions most recently is “I am Charlotte Simmons” by Tom Wolfe, but it isn’t the first time I’ve considered them. So maybe it’s a little odd, but I doubt uncommon amongst fans of literature.

Buckley underwhelms

I was seriously underwhelmed when last I read Chris Buckley.

Writing for The Daily Beast, Buckley titled his piece, “Sorry, Dad, I’m voting for Obama,” and laid out his arguments for why he’s supporting Barack Obama for president. He opines that John McCain has abandoned his independent, mostly honest tendencies in favor of playing to the Republican Party’s religious, socially conservative base. He further claims McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee is the result of the party abandoning serious intellectual pursuits in favor of populist, anti-intellectualism.

The bottom line is he’s right about both; however, I seriously question the wisdom of anyone who claims to believe in a  small-government philosophy and plans to vote for Obama.

Buckley says:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephy.

For someone honestly concerned with conservatism that statement is an insufficient rationale to vote for Obama. While Obama is a smart man, his principles are wrong. McCain is a heroic man and his principles are also wrong. Neither man is sufficiently concerned with maximizing freedom, which is integral to a small-government conservative philosophy.

McCain is only slightly superior to Obama in this contest, admittedly, and that gives the conservative no comfort. However, picking Obama an admitted “progressive” provides less comfort than picking McCain a liberal Republican.

From someone as intellectually gifted as Buckley, I expected stronger reasoning, hence the underwhelming feeling I’m left with. I’m still a fan of Chris Buckley, but I expected more than *just* a wonderfully written, poorly argued essay that points toward a poor outcome.

I’ve always loved this song

I’ve only been ice skating once. It was two years ago during a conference in Pittsburgh. I met a girl there, right before getting onto the ice. We chatted briefly while strapping on our skates. I remember she was from an East Coast state and that she had skated before. She helped me around the ice until I managed to skate pretty well.

I only fell down twice. We glided across the ice for hours.

After ice skating, I remember that we went to a Robert Morris hockey game and that we sat next to one another. It was loud, but I think we got our picture taken together.

Later that evening, she came back to our room and about six of us played cards for several hours (much longer than we should have) until it got entirely too late in the night. She left for her hotel room, my fellow students and I stayed in ours.

We went our separate ways for the later part of the conference and I don’t have any memories of participating in activities with her. And, there were quite a few activities spread out over the course of the weekend.

I don’t even remember the girl’s name but the time we shared together is one of my better college memories. Odd how that happened.

My point: Sometimes really cool things happen when you least expect them. I’m torn between believing that these sort of things happen less often to me than others and believing that they happen more often to me than others. The truth is, it’s impossible to know.

Has anyone else randomly met someone, had a great time and then never saw the person again?

Twelve cheers for quintessence

While listening to Local H’s album Twelve Angry Months, I had an idea: I should discern the best possible word to describe each month for the next twelve months. I’m going to try and find the word that best sums up the “essence” or the capital-t truth of my collected experiences of that month.

I use the word discern because the word isn’t something I’m going to create or make up, it’s a thought I’m going to pull out of the nether; the word that is the closest I can find to capturing what happened to me.

EDIT: I changed my mind on this. While I still consider it a neat idea, I’ve realized my days fold around too many themes for this to really work out. I’d try to do a better job of incorporating these feelings into individual posts.

Defending the barracuda

Conservatives worthy of the name, listen up: We’ve got to protect Sarah Palin.

This has nothing to do with her being a woman. It has nothing to do with women being weaker than men. This actually has nothing to do at all with her sex/gender. So, lets clear that up right off the bat.

The mainstream media and the hateful, liberal attack dogs are against her and willing to take any measure to destroy her. And, if you’re a conservative, it is incumbent upon you to stand up and defend her against them because when they attack her they’re also attacking your best shot for conservatism in the White House.

John McCain may not be worthy of a good conservative’s defense. But, Sarah Palin is. And, however strong the baracoda may be, nobody can stand against the liberals by herself/himself. The smears that came out against her almost immediately after John McCain chose her are evidence enough that the left will use any tactic to harm her. The left knows no boundaries with its hate.

We must stand together or we’ll all hang separately.

WoW screenshots

Here’s some screenshots of Kudoy, the dwarf paladin I play on Maiev.