You generally distinguish politics and society, noting that the latter is far more consequential.
This apparently is not understood by a so-called conservative like Hugh Hewitt, who wrote after the election that it had turned back the Sixties! What utter nonsense! The Sixties are more influential than ever.

The left is winning the far more important culture war. It controls the schools, the media, the libraries, etc and is marching ahead to drive out or marginalize Christianity, destroy marriage, impose its immoral-amoral radical egalitarianism, etc etc.

Further, if Reps defeat Dems (and it was a narrow win), they appear to be doing so by abandoning any pretense of conservatism.

President Bush received 3.5 million more popular votes that Senator Kerry, but the election was really pretty close. The 51% Bush total in the popular vote is hardly crushing. If Kerry had gotten 65,001 more votes in Ohio, he would have won the state and the election. There were three others states, one of them was Iowa, I don’t remember the others, that Kerry lost by a total of 21,000 votes. Had he won those states, he would have won the election regardless of Ohio. Don’t forget that the 49 state victory of Richard Nixon in 1972 was followed by the election of Jimmy Carter. Things can change in a hurry. I think it’s a mistake to say there has been a fundemental or permanent change that will somehow forever deny the left the White House.

I agree with the commenter’s main point, and have said the same myself. But the situation is highly ambiguous and needs to be analyzed from several points of view. Certainly the Democrats and the Republicans both feel that the Dems endured a major loss.

Any political movement which adheres rigidly to its own internal logic will eventually run off the rails into irrelevance or worse. See “Logic has no place in politics” at http://pbswatch.blogspot.com/

With the Bush takeover of the Republican Party, the Left is better entrenched than before, because the Bush brand of liberalism has strengthened its grip on America’s establishment “conservative” party and most people are no longer able to tell real conservatives from the pseuds. Mr. Warren notes the cultural defeat that Tyrrell ignores, while Mr. Quimby notes that the Bush re-election was no triumph.

Tyrrell cannot focus on what immigration is doing to America (the “darker turn of events” Mr. Auster speaks of?) because to do so would be to criticize President Bush, to whom he has sworn utter fealty as our Wartime Commander-in-Chief and Anti-Clinton, about something vitally important. That would never do. Tyrrell once was a real conservative with an edge. In the late 1980s I enjoyed reading the American Spectator because one could get conservatism there without the ritual politesse toward liberals that NR under Buckley always wasted on them. It was conservatism outside the New York City hothouse.

I think Tyrrell has traveled the same road as the NR crew. Even if he realizes how bad things have become, how likely they are to get worse and how pitifully little accommodationist conservatism has accomplished, it is so much nicer to hail Bush (!) as a hero while waxing rhapsodic about all the great things Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did. New days bring new battles and today’s mainstream conservatives are unwilling to fight today’s battles. As no end of VFR posters have said, by acceding to today’s non-standards in so many things they have become liberals, no matter what they call themselves.

Once one gets past the lip-service (rarely is it more) mainstream conservatives pay to opposing abortions and homosexual “marriages,” what separates avowed liberals and nominal conservatives? About the only differences I see are that the nom-cons want to cut taxes (not spending, though) and are more comfortable with using military force.

The Democrats’ losses in 2004 are short-term and tactical. The post-modern mish-mash of ever declining standards and polymorphous perversity that Left wants for us all very much holds the strategic initiative. Unless a true conservative force emerges in American politics, we will soon be fed it by Republicans just as much as Democrats. Just look at what nominally conservative parties in Britain, Western Europe and Canada endorse. We are not so far behind. HRS

I was going to post a comment at PBS Watcher’s blog but didn’t feel like registering.

PBS Watcher describes the unprincipled exception as a “travesty of logic.” This is not correct. Remember that the term unprincipled exception is somewhat ironic. When I say that an exception is unprincipled, I mean, first, that it is unprincipled from the point of view of _liberalism_, and, second, that since liberalism does not allow any non-liberal principles to be expressed, any attempt to oppose to liberalism is deprived of a principled basis. For example, liberalism will allow opposition to liberalism on the basis of an instinctive sense that things have gone “too far,” but it will not allow opposition to liberalism on the basis of an explicitly non-liberal principle.

An unprincipled exception is not a travesty of logic. Rather it is a _true_ though pre-logical or non-logical way of opposing liberalism, which is the only way of opposing liberalism that is allowed in liberal society. Since liberalism is in the true sense of the word irrational (that is, its doctrines do not correspond with reality), to oppose liberalism via the unprincipled exception is actually the rational thing to do. The problem is that an explicitly rational opposition to liberalism is not allowed.

Also, “Hegelian mambo” was coined by our participant Matt.

I just read the article and found it ridiculously optimistic. It is not possible to be anything but concerned about America’s future, even if the conservatives do find a more tradtitional candidate, since so much damage has been done. Here is a quote from a writer named Leonard Steinhorn:

“in time this election may be seen not as the
wave of the future but as the last gasp of the
cultural past.”

The whole article was in FrontPageMagazine on November 12, 20004. I will include the link and hope I have enough characters (not sure I understand this) :
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=15906

Just go to the archives at FPM if the link doesn’t work.

Myriam’s posting of the hyperlink is fine. The only thing to remember is that a hyperlink must not be at the very beginning of a comment. You need about 100 characters preceding the hyperlink to avoid the disturbance to the display of VFR’s main page. I’m sorry about this and will try to get it fixed, but can’t do it right now.

As noted in some of the interesting comments above, some liberals masquerade as conservatives, e.g. the egregious David Brooks, who has written, among other things, columns endorsing homosexual marriage and the dumbing down of religion(altho he called it “free choice”). His NYT Magazine essay of some weeks back, on the Republican future, ignored the biggest problem in our country — the de-moralization of our culture and society (of which the NBA fracas, the Pentagon surrender to the ACLU re. the Boy Scouts, and the secular version of Thanksgiving being taught in increasing numbers of schools, are the latest examples). Would the NYT publish a true conservative? Of course not. Brooks and another faux conservative, Charles Krauthammer, prefer to discuss moral issues only by way of dismissing their role in the election, or in Krauthammer’s case, by trashing Gibson’s “The Passion” film

Many younger “conservatives” are anything but — e.g. the even more egregious Jonah GOldberg and the boys now in charge of National Review. (Talk about dumbing down!) Almost two years ago an essay I published at claremont.org criticizing some younger “conservatives” who praised Eminem’s filthy “Eight Mile”, Scorsese’s anti-American “Gangs of NY” and similar symbols of moral decline was wildly denounced by J. BOttum at the Weekly Standard. In the age of the optimists’ conservative renaissance there isn’t one worthwhile true conservative journal, nor is a wise voice like Lawrence Auster’s heard regularly on TV or radio. Fortunately we have View from the Right and other blogs.

At one time, conservative columnists and magazine editors were heedless of the sort of compromises that politicians routinely engage in. After all, they were not trying to get elected.

For some reason, the magazine and column writers of today seem to be running for office. They must not stray too far from GOP orthodoxy. For a major talk radio host, columnist, or magazine to endorse a third-party candidate, for example, would be to stray out of the mainstream and lose some social prestige inside the Beltway. Will blogs really be able to fill the vacuum left by the deterioration of conservative magazines and columnists?

Now what shape could “a permanent resurgence of the left due to immigration-fueled ethnic changes” take? Poor immigrants will be economically leftist but reactionary in social spheres. The shrinking white remnant which controls the Left, conversely, has largely given up the economic ghost and embraced social radicalism.

This looks like an easy coalition to bust up. The Stupid Party won’t do it, but independent forces on the right can have a field day.

Going back to Spencer and Floyd’s posts, I might point out that the reason Dems are reeling from this last election is not so much that Bush won in and of itself (which was obviously not anything like a Reagan landslide), but rather a combination of things.

The Reps won the presidency with a massively unpopular war going on and a far less than stellar economic situation. Furthermore, the Reps picked up or maintained power just about everywhere: national, state, and local. More importantly, this isn’t a new thing; it’s been trending this way (excepting Teflon Willy) for over a decade now.

Traditionalists may still be unsatisfied, but Republican jubilance and Democrat hand-wringing seem justified in this light.

What Dan says makes complete since, _if_ you leave out the fact that the Democratic candidate was the worst ever, and should, in a well-ordered America, have lost by 20 points. That a man of Kerry’s record, personality, and evident unwillingness to use force to defend America came so close to winning the presidency should not make Republicans jubilant.

But this is a situation in which relativism actually seems appropriate. There are different paradigms through which to view the election, depending on which factors you bring to the fore. If you leave Kerry’s appalling badness out of the picture, the Republican victory is impressive.

In a good essay at Lew Rockwell’s website, Texas Rep. Ron Paul thinks aloud about where he thinks the country is going. He focuses on three things: irresponsible fiscal and economic policy and the plight of our fiat dollar, the moral crisis of abortion, and the Iraq war and interventionism generally. I am disappointed that he says nothing about the demographic crisis of immigration and illegal invasion, although he does mention the need to secure our borders, but Paul rarely has much to say about immigration. To me the most important part of his essay (and the reason I mention it here) is his list of important issues where he perceived no meaningful difference between President Bush and Senator Kerry:

“Interesting enough, both candidates graduated from Yale and both were members of the controversial and highly secretive Skull and Bones Society. This fact elicited no interest with the media in the campaign.

Both candidates supported the Iraq War and the continuation of it.
Both supported the Patriot Act and its controversial attack on personal privacy.
Both supported the UN and the internationalism of UNESCO, IMF, World Bank, and the WTO.
Both candidates agreed that a president can initiate war without a declaration by Congress.
Both supported foreign interventionism in general, foreign aid, and pursuing American interests by maintaining a worldwide American empire.
Both supported our current monetary system, which permits the Federal Reserve to accommodate deficit spending by Congress through the dangerous process of debt monetization.
Both supported expanding entitlements, including programs like the National Endowment for the Arts, medical benefits, and federal housing programs.
Both candidates supported deficit financing.
Both candidates supported increased spending in almost all categories.”

Paul should have added immigration to his list, and I’m disappointed that he didn’t. Nevertheless, it is a damning bill of particulars and a reminder that Bush and Kerry represent nothing more combative than the two wings of the governing party, which is thoroughly liberal, globalist and, I would add, multiculturalist.

The full essay is here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul218.html. HRS