Four times today I was asked, by Christians who were very earnest and quite confused by an email that has been widely circulated: "Is Barack Obama a radical Muslim who intends to take over the country and destroy the US?"
Apparently one of these Internet "myths" has gained so much steam today, oddly after the primary last evening in New Hampshire, that it is now being passed around to hundreds of thousands via the Web. I read the letter this evening. What grieves me profoundly is that Christians read and forward this stuff to their friends as if they are warning people of impending disaster. Frankly, this is akin to slander and commits the person who forwards it to carelessly sinning against both this man and the truth.

I do wonder who creates these kinds of letters and why they are sent in the first place? Did someone from a campaign do it? Did someone who has an agenda to destroy Obama create […]

Watching the election results from New Hampshire tonight now makes it clear that Senator John McCain, given up for dead politically in August-September of 2007, is alive and well.
Senator McCain has created quite a stir over the course of his public career in the U. S. Senate. He is a self-described "maverick" and never seems to fit into the comfortable categories of any single interest group. He is clearly a social conservative, if you check his record, and at the same time he can appeal to both Republicans and Independents. He even appeals to some Democrats, like Joe Lieberman sorts, who believe the president needs to be a strong commander-in-chief.

McCain won tonight among those who were looking for a person who was most qualified to be commander-in-chief. Personal qualities were more important than leadership qualities, at least to voters for John McCain. His fiesty and no-nonsense style is popular once again. And 74% of NH voters today said John McCain is […]

One of President Bush’s most debatable legacies will be his idea regarding the spread of democracy. The vast majority of people seem to disagree with him. I have had my doubts I will admit. In theory I do agree with him but then when you look at the world as it really is I have doubted that his view can be sustained in a meaningful way. But columnist Charles Krauthammer has a distinctive way of making me rethink my conclusions and today he did it again.

Krauthammer’s syndicated column in my paper this morning is titled: "Difficulty of Spreading Democracy Throughout the World." What an understatement! He admits the great difficulties that are apparent to everyone who knows anything about the modern world. He sets Pakistan forward as exhibit A. With the death of Benazir Bhutto her nineteen year-old son will now represent the Pakistan People’s Party, which really is the Bhutto "we deserve to rule" party. Elections in Pakistan have historically been about the way the Bhutto family regains power. Benazir gained power after her father was hung following a […]

Republicans are right when they seek to invoke President Ronald Reagan’s legacy as their standard. Because Reagan redefined what it meant to be a Republican so profoundly his legacy will remain the gold standard for some time. George W. Bush ran on that legacy but did not hold to it in important ways once he was elected. In much the same way Democrats have invoked the legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as their standard bearer for over sixty years. The major difference is that modern Democrats are much further from FDR, at least on foreign policy, than any of them would ever care to admit.

But most Republicans have already abandoned the Reagan legacy too, it is just not so obvious yet. My friend Andrew Sandlin captures this fracture very well in a piece that he wrote this week. I urge you to read it. Andrew expresses well what I noted a few days ago on this site when I outlined a simple three-point test for what should guide a modern conservative political philosophy. I also think he is quite […]

I have made a lot of reference on this site to the type of conservatism that I embrace socially and politically. I am not going to write an essay explaining this philosophy, since many of you can figure this out by now and if you care at all you will try. But it is right and fair to say that there are three essential planks in my conservatism.

1. National Defense

Regardless of anything else a country must do, via its government (Romans 13), if it is not protected in the modern world it will not last for long, especially when it has avowed and determined enemies. It is a simple fact that we have such avowed enemies and they are Muslim Jihadists. They intend to destroy our civilization one way or the other. I do not prefer, as George Weigel has taught me, to use terms like Islamo-Fascism or Islamo-Nazism since these terms are not easily understood or really appropriate. The Jidhadist term is used by Muslims themselves and thus says all we need to say. So, a truly conservative position […]