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 […]

Our democracy is at work this evening even though the process is playing out in an antiquated form in the Iowa caucuses. I am listening to Extension 720, hosted by Milt Rosenberg, a wonderful program on our local Chicago super station, WGN. Rosenberg is one of the most fair and honest conservative voices I know in radio. He is an intellectual with a keen interest in almost every subject imaginable. I listen to him because he will give every angle of the story a fair look.

Who will win? What difference will it make? Right now no one knows. I lean towards the data which says Obama and Huckabee will win tonight. (Early data says older adults vote for Clinton while younger ones go for Obama.) In the end I do not think this caucus matters a great deal. The Iowa caucus has rarely made a real difference in the primary process. It must be understood that it is not even a primary in the true sense of the word. But in turns of impact in Iowa Jimmy Carter comes to […]

Please do not try to convince me that the religious right is not still playing a major role in Republican politics. And definitely do not try to convince me that a very conservative, white, deeply religious viewpoint has not played a pivotal role in Governor Mike Huckabee’s rising poll numbers among prospective Republican voters.

Roughly four in ten white evangelical Christians have made a change in who they say they will vote for since November, similar to other Republicans who shifted candidates. But 56 percent of evangelicals who found another candidate flocked to Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, giving him 36 percent of the support of one of the GOP’s heavyweight voting blocs, well ahead of all his rivals.

The intensely religious were even more restless—and thus even more taken with Huckabee’s openly religious appeal. (He is running ads in select states that are all but evangelical sermons! He is using these in Iowa and South Carolina but not in New Hampshire, where his ads are quite different if there are run at all these days.) Among evangelicals who are […]