Why not help those who help you? Did you ever ask yourself this question and then formulate a definite answer before passing on to another perhaps of less importance? Most of us would “go straight up,” in the language of the street, if we were accused of being selfish and something would surely happen if someone would label us an ingrate. Yet it can be truthfully said of most of us that we are not entirely free from these unmanly characteristics. No, the thing uppermost in our mind when we commenced this article was the business relations existing between us all in our little community. We are largely dependent on each other for our existence. Our interests are in common and as taxpayers we all contribute our share to the maintenance of our local government and educational institutions.

Many of us seem to forget our neighbors—in a business way. When some of us have a few dollars in cash and are in need of some commodity, we seem to forget about our taxpaying neighbors who are in business at home. We unconsciously pass their place of business and via the varnished cars enter the markets of Chicago, Fort Wayne, or South Bend and deposit our home-made dollars into the pockets of strangers who do not contribute one cent toward the maintenance of our local government or schools, and who never befriend us when we need a friend.

[My emphasis. - NPO]

Our current governor, Mitch Daniels, previously President Bush’s OMB’s director, a potential 2012 presidential-nomination candidate, and of that party purportedly dedicated to federalism, supported the recently approved-by-voters State-Constitutional amendment to cap property-tax rates, thus cutting off significant local-government funding. Mitch Daniels, a Republican; Henry F. Schricker, a Democrat, but much more of a front-porch republican. “My Man Mitch” would do well to learn the lessons of the German-Lutheran Jeffersonian from Starke County.

The South is certainly highly conservative in temperament (disliking change), but it is actually oddly Progressive in the values it wishes to conserve. Whether its detractors realize it or not, The South represents a chapter in Progressivism’s past, and a chapter in its present. Progressives hate the sight of it. But like it or not, The South (as a movement) is actually a form of half-grown Progressivism that couldn’t quite get the hang of it.”

Novel, and absurd. To a degree, Brown is correct in noting that some of “the values [The South] wishes to conserve” coincide with certain Progressive values, just as he is when he posits that the founders of the Religious Right — Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson — acted Progressively insofar as they “made [social issues] into national crises demanding coercive, national legislative and judicial measures.” But in his continued obsession with Progressivism, Brown errs grossly on at least three points.

First, there is something peculiar — even incoherent — about his claiming that they wish conservatively to preserve Progressive values, only then to cite abortion and gay marriage as the issues that they wish to combat — very conservative values, it seems to me — through Progressive means. (Only later does he make the partially correct contention that The South has adopted the earlier Progressive value of militant nationalism.) Toward the end of the essay, he hedges his claim, noting,

The counter to all this, of course, is that Progressivism tends to be anti-tradition, anti-family, and anti-religious, while The South is the proud preserver of all of the above. But just as the initial description of The South was a pejorative generalization, so this is a pejorative generalization of Progressivism. Many of Progressivism’s early leading men were deeply religious (Wilson is an example); only comparatively recently have the atheistic sects of the movement gained control of its policies. And the significance of The South’s upholding of tradition and family, while real, has been diluted by its adoption of the Progressive moral tradition of nationalism and material tradition of massive strip malls, chain stores, and Wal Marts over many local institutions.

I am right with Brian in condemning the “adoption of … material tradition of … Wal Marts over many local institutions”, but, again, he proceeds a leap too far in accusing The South of seeking to conserve Progressive values, when they’ve actually been guilty of using Progressive tactics to conserve their values. Moreover, he borders on equivocation with the suggestion that because Wilson was deeply religious, he was also a “proud preserver” of tradition, family, and religion. Few things so impressively rout all of the above as does engaging in a war — with a draft no less! — on another continent — to say nothing of post-war policies — when the United States traditionally had observed the Monroe Doctrine (itself a disturbing innovation). Add to that the list of federal accomplishments under Wilson — the Federal Reserve Act, the Revenue Act of 1913 —, and we see, however unintentionally, an enemy certainly of family and tradition, both moral and American-political.

Second, simply to suggest that the leaders of the Religious Right, and, following them, The South, adopted “Progressive ideas [as] the best way to solve social problems” while remaining “highly conservative in temperament (disliking change)” fails to place matters in proper context: To wit, the Religious Right and The South have not simply chosen to play by Progressive rules, but have had Progressivism forced upon them. Certainly, they could (possibly!) have chosen something of a Benedict Option, or a more ardently localist front-porch approach, rather than having adopted tricks from the Progressive playbook, but given the ramifications, for example, of Roe (Brown, recall, specifically mentions abortion.), such tactics would have offered little opportunity for undoing the atrociously Progressive act of legalizing infanticide. (I have argued, and intend to do so here at NCM later, that culturally conservative localism and a repudiation of “social conservatism” is necessary if we ever seek to develop a meaningful, strong Culture of Life, so I’ll concede to Brown slightly, but this is decidedly not the same thing as overcoming entrenched Progressivism in the chambers of government; that is, our building a Culture of Life from the ground up does not mean that we necessarily can afford to stop fighting the game on the Progressives’ terms simultaneously, given that they still rule the roost.) Just as Herbert Croly, as Brian notes, determined that the conditions of his time “demand[ed] as a counterpoise a more effective body of national opinion, and a more powerful organization of the national interest”, the Religious Right and The South recognized that Croly’s desired “more effective body” had ascended to dominance, and they had to form their own counterpoise thereto.

Perhaps needless to say, despite my occasional libertarian leanings and rule-of-law-based reluctant Constitutionalism, the predominant front-porch republican strain in me immediately anathematizes the Court’s decision. Given the ease with which corporations ably circumvent what restrictions heretofore existed (as ably noted in an unsettlingly almost-persuasive defense of the decision by Glenn Greenwald), fears that this decision in any way really changes matters in practice are probably exaggerated, but I, nonetheless, worry about to what the messages that this decision send, however quietly they will reverberate in a nation of acquiescent sycophants and myopic, long-term-memory-challenged “activists”, will amount.

First, it is a First-Amendment issue, at least as “freedom of speech” has come to be understood and to be applied to “corporate persons” as well as to ensouled people. Accepting this — and further acknowledging that the wording of the First Amendment says nothing about to whom the freedom of speech belongs (“Originalism”, I suspect, provides an answer, but not one that “conservative” “originalists” presently on the Court would likely wish to entertain. See below.) —, I have to raise the predictable question about equating money with speech, or, rather, designating spending money as a form of speech. Specifically, my concern lies with equality, the equality of liberty. (Greenwald, again, makes a discomfortingly almost-persuasive case for money as speech.)

The reality is that “the average corporation” — “the small business: the dentist, daycare operator, or grocery store owner who has incorporated due to the nature of our litigious society”, as asserted by an ardently Republican good friend of mine — is not the average corporation financially able to “say” anything loudly enough and frequently enough to get things done. That being the case, doesn’t this still decision still warp freedom of speech, subjecting it to the market? That is, instead of an equally possessed right, the freedom of corporate (political) speech is something afforded more to those who have money than to those who lack it. (Problematically, we must address this same issue when we consider individual expenditures comprising political “speech”(; more on this, as a matter of principle, below). Practically speaking, the decisive factor seems to me to be that corporate influence tends, as a matter of finances, to be much more effective than individual campaign contributions, and that matters relating to economy of scale permit the large corporate entity to out”speak” the small businessmen more effectively than the wealthy individual can the small-money campaign donor. (Also, money-bombing seems to have shown that en masse, small-time donors can make a big splash, even if their recipients ultimately fail to gain sufficient traction to upend the political Establishment.) This seems to be either a rejection of soi-disant conservatives’ preference for “equality of opportunity”, or one hell of a reductionist stretch of said principle.

Now, on to a meatier point, returning to the more foundational question of corporate personhood. I have a serious problem with the precedent set, directly or not, by Santa Clara, fully detesting the very notion that anything other than an ensouled, free-will-possessing human is a person. But even accepting that, I am troubled by the theoretical threat to federalism that rulings of this nature — and, admittedly, the very notion of corporate personhood that I’m begrudgingly accepting as precedent — present. Allow me, no Constitutional-law scholar (and thus willing to be corrected, or supported, by someone better versed in the field) to demonstrate.

A corporation exists because it is chartered by a State government. That is, it is a beast of the State’s creation, which intuitively suggests that the State ought to be able to regulate it as it sees fit. So perhaps the Citizens United decision is the right one, prima facie, because it’s stripping the federal government of regulatory power properly left to the States(; we’ll leave aside implicit questions about inter-State commerce). However, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment (regarding which the SCotUS originally granted personhood to corporations (“Judicial legislation”?)), the State loses the right to regulate what it has created because the federal court has deemed this chartered — rather than incarnate — “person” to be worthy of Constitutional protections that, through the Incorporation Doctrine, the State must now honor. It may not be an obviously direct ramification of Santa Clara, Citizens United, et cetera, but it seems to me to be a legitimate cause for concern.

Then again, the Constitution was our first, worst mistake, an inherently centralizing document for the large, commercial republic, endorsed by the sorts for whom talk of the States was mere pretense.

In the comment section of an exceptional post of his at Front Porch Republic, John Médaille has this to say:

[T]he Supremes were merely recognizing an established fact: that the government of the United States is a wholly owned and operated subsidary of corporate America. Why should the plutocracy be limited in the amount of money they spend in supporting their employees? What the Supremes did was to reveal how little they cared for “original intent,” since the founders never intended to give corporations the rights of natural persons.

And via Ted Chan, this:

Today’s structure of law gives corporations a spectrum of legal and constitutional rights which they routinely wield against people, communities, and nature. Corporations have more rights, for example, than the communities in which they seek to do business. They can and do use those rights to lobby Congress, impact elections, and to decide for us what we eat, whether mountaintops are blown off or not, whether there are fish in the oceans, and on and on. Their constitutional and other legal rights, together with their wealth, guarantee that they can define the debates that lead to the adoption of new laws—and often write the laws themselves.

Update: John Médaille offers his thoughts here:

All CU wanted was for the court to bless their end-run around the campaign laws. Corporate contributions were not an issue in the case, and not part of the relief that plaintiffs were seeking. But for some unknown reasons, the court decided to re-hear the case on grounds that had nothing to do with the plaintiffs plea. The rehearing was peculiar, not only in widening the grounds of the case beyond the issues that were placed before it, but in ordering the rehearing for September 9th, a full month before the court’s session normally began. This seems to indicate some undue haste in deciding so pivotal an issue. One is tempted to think that the majority wanted this issue decided in time to dismantle the current laws in advance of the coming congressional elections. One is permitted to ask here whether the court’s agenda is judicial or political.

In ruling on the issues presented to it, the court upheld the FEC against CU. But on the issues that were no part of the original case, they voluntarily threw out restrictions against corporate funding of campaigns, restrictions that date back to 1907 and have been upheld by every court since then, in test after test. They have, at a stroke, undone 100 years of legislation and judicial precedent. This is not evolution, but revolution, and a revolution predicated on some very peculiar grounds.

The majority of the court treated this as a “free speech” case. Yet, this is somewhat perplexing. As far as I know, CEOs have always had the right to say whatever they liked, to support whatever candidate they wanted, to go to whatever rallies they wished, and to write letters to the editor whenever they felt the need. That is, they enjoyed all the rights of free speech that every other citizen has. As far as I can recall, there are very few corporate executives in prison for expressing their opinions. The court, however, was not interested in the rights of the executives, but in the rights of the corporations as “legal persons” endowed with all the rights of natural persons. This is a rather peculiar doctrine that originated in another example of legislating from the bench, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific (1886), which granted “personhood” to corporations. This rule was a complete overturning not only of the court’s previous rulings, but of the long history of corporation law dating back to the Middle Ages.

Since late May, I’ve been living — again, at age twenty-five and possessing a master’s degree, yes — with my parents in rural North Judson, Indiana. In theory, this place is the apotheosis of the front-porch republic: a small, fairly compact town with an obvious central business district that still has some businesses left facing it; houses positioned fairly close to the street (often, though not always, with sidewalks betwixt the two, and with garages off of alleys, rather than facing the street); people who know each other well, and so on. One of my greatest joys these days is ambling down the street (really, along the right-of-way of the non-existent alley, behind my immediate neighbor’s fence) to neighbors Mike and Becky’s place. I divide my time there between drinking beer (usually, I lamentably note, mass-produced, canned swill, but, hey, it’s Mike’s beer, it’s free, and de gustibus non est disputandum — and it’s beer!) and watching football with Mike and assisting him (in, for instance, the effort to turn his garage into a “Mancave”), and entertaining their four absolutely wonderful children. A good number of people in town and the surrounding area know me — either because I worked at the grocery store years, or because they know one or both of my parents —, and most think fairly highly of me. One member of the town council, knowing that I have my degree in planning, has spoken to me about working on a master plan for the town, and some years ago, the then-president of the council implored me to run for the open seat in my district. (I apologize for the self-aggrandizing digression; I aim merely to emphasize the Mayberry-esque side of my humble hamlet.)

Alas, for the educated, community-oriented, twenty-something localist, the dark side of small-town life rears its ugly head ferociously and frequently. Living on my own, in suburban Maryland, I had to feed myself, and when I did so, I ate much healthier — more conscientiously and consistently — than I ever had or have since coming home. Granted, now, Mommy does most of the grocery shopping, and does so at a number of stores, independent and chain, locally and regionally, but when I do buy for myself, I prefer to give business to my former employer out of persistent gratitude, because he’s (one of the) local grocer(s), and because the store has historical familial significance to me — and because I rarely have the time or desire to travel just for food. This makes eating well difficult: most problematically, the variety and quality of fresh fruits and vegetables leave so much to be desired; finding diet or low-calorie anything to drink (other than pop, or “soda”) is typically just as troublesome. And that’s to say nothing of eating well: To be even a novice epicure is unfathomably difficult here. (And our humble liquor store, reliable as it is for a decent surprise six-pack and your typical booze fare, keeps in stock neither a one single-malt Scotch nor a bottle of wine that costs more than ten bucks!) Get me started not on other retail options: The day I can find a book (other than some trashy used romance novel!) in town, or a c.d., let alone clothing or accessories in North Judson, oh, happy day!

Ah, but I complain too trivially.

Right now, my pittance comes to me for a half-time internship that I hold thirty miles away. Now, nothing compelled me to take the internship, but getting my feet wet, so to speak, in my field has been good for me, and although I received my degree without fulfilling the internship requirement, I felt something of an obligation to uphold a gentlemen’s agreement made with my program’s director. Moreover, I wanted, at least for the time, to remain (close to) home: Despite the entire point of this disquisition, I am quite fond of this little burg, and I felt, and still feel, the tugs of familial obligation. And there just ain’t a lot of good work in these parts. One evening, out for my post meridiem perambulation, I stopped at the grocery store to visit. The cashier that night, who had worked under me during my tenure as night manager, remarked, “Everybody’s on food stamps.” Apparently, we Americans have escaped the recession, but in North Judson we’ve been enduring a depression for quite some time. I am fortunate to have the options afforded to me by a bachelor’s degree from a top-tier university and a master’s degree in a field in which demand for drones still exists, so I’m not doomed to remain here, as others are. However, as is the case for some others, I should like to remain here. But money, I hear, talks, and slowly, but surely, it has been speaking more loudly. I have student loans to repay; someday I hope to raise a family; and we have a wonderful Sears Catalog Home on the farm, built in 1913, in which my grandfather was born and raised, that I should positively love to restore.

Notwithstanding one beer-and-Bourbon-fueled night at Brantwood with one of my best friends since elementary school, intellectual stimulation has excused itself from my real, social life in North Judson. Multiple stacks of books line my bedroom, and I read — too slowly, too infrequently —, but reading loses its luster when I’ve no one with whom to discuss what I’ve ingested. So, it is the Internet that is my solace: Weblogs and instant-messenger conversations constitute the bulk of my mental activity these days. Although this is far better than nothing, and often truly enjoyable, it lacks something. I hate the dependence on technology that it demands, but I also bewail the incompleteness of the conversations. Tenor, timbre, pitch, tone — these are all lost in the flatness of typed discourse. I travel to Chicago every weekend for a Latin class, the only social intellectual stimulation upon which I can count regularly. I have to drive ninety miles to make muh brain wurk. Exercises such as this posting help, but, even if I have the pleasure of replying to a dozen comments, from a dozen people (Not holding my breath!), it will not be the same as if I were discussing this topic with only one person over coffee.

Presently, Nisbet’s The Quest for Community has my all-too-easily distracted attention; I sincerely doubt that anyone else in North Judson has even heard of this work. How am I to venture into the local coffee shop hoping to discuss Nisbet under such circumstances? Perhaps I am too harsh in making this point: Folk needn’t all to be intellectually oriented as I am, but this total isolation become impoverishing.

Regrettably, perhaps it is spiritually that the reality of the front-porch-with-holes-in-the-floor life most deeply impoverishes. As I noted above, every Sunday morning (save the Friday evening when I headed up early to attend a debate held by a fantastic conservative student organization at the University of Chicago — talk about stimulation!) I drive to Chicago for an hour-long beginners’ Latin course. A parish, St. John Cantius, offers the course, and I remain at the church for Mass, usually spending seventy-five minutes reading between class and the twelve-thirty Mass. That I have not attended Mass at my home parish in more than a month saddens me: This is the parish in which I was welcome into the Church through all of the Sacraments of Initiation, where my parents were married, and where my paternal grandmother played the organ for sixty-five years. It’s my parish, in my hometown, where I was an altar boy for years, a church to which I can walk in a few minutes.

And yet, despite the very un-front-porchiness of it all, I cannot really regret eschewing the local Mass for that offered by Cantius. Excluding the occasion rendering of the “Gloria”, I recall no point since 2002 at which a parish priest has uttered a word of Latin; at Cantius, I attend Latin Masses exclusively, sometimes the Novus Ordo, but generally the Tridentine High Mass. At Ss. Cyril & Methodious, altar girls (and, on rare occasion, boys) wear sandals while serving the altar! At Cantius, only males serve, and the sense of reverence and decorum that they show is impeccable. The æsthetic grandeur of St. John Cantius is truly awe-inspiring and spiritually uplifting. Despite a respectable attempt to improve the church’s interior appearance a few years ago, by and large, Ss. S&M remains the mutilated victim of post-Vatican II whitewashing. Lastly, Ss. C&M is a parish; Cantius is a community of faith (and I mean this in the best way possible). It’s vibrant, with families of four and five children, classes, reading groups, a schola cantorum, the church-basement café where I do my reading, and the Canons Regular. And orthodoxy! My home parish, yes, has the Knights and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, but it just isn’t the vigorous stronghold of faith that encourages the flourishing of the Faith.

Again, the localists at FPR are hardly ignorant of these issues, but these concerns receive far too little attention, except, perchance, as a criticism of those of us who raise high the small-is-beautiful banner. North Judson needs front-porch republicans: The free-market social conservative, however much he sympathizes, ultimately gives in to the forces of Progress, pronouncing the inevitability of the desiccation of Middle America, embracing his suburban lifestyles, and taking comfort in the absence of government meddling in economic affairs, consequences be damned. I decidedly do not believe that small-town America is doomed, but it needs help. I’m not ready to abandon it; as I said, I want to raise a family in that restored farmhouse (on to which I shall make one addition: a real front porch), and I have much interest in doing whatever I can to help to devise a master plan for this town that guides it on the path to rebirth. But the front-porch right has to reconsider a few things. When industrialized agriculture and what remains of heavy industry in the Gary area are two of the more lucrative sources of employment for people here, our caterwauling against big, ugly, and mechanized — however on-target it generally be — needs to be tempered. Our highfalutin talk ‘bout Aristotle and Wendell Berry and Christopher Lasch and the Anti-Federalists — as great as all them folk are — means very little to the great bulk of citizens of the crumbling republics; sometimes, we need to get into the nitty gritty of it all, realizing that, as much as we idealize the agrarian way, it is so far off of these people’s radars that to speak of it when trying to act meaningfully is almost pointless.

I love my front-porch republic; I can only hope that, someday, it is truly worthy of the mostly unconditional love that I shower on it. I hope that its loveliness becomes such that people choose to stay here — can choose to remain —, rather than be compelled to do so.

From the article:

[Stam] has signed on to be a spokesperson for the American Dairy Association of Indiana to help spread the good news about the importance of dairy nutrition, as well as tell the story of Indiana’s dairy farmers.

Stam grew up in Seymour and helped on her family’s dairy farm as a child. She is a 10-year 4-H member and showed dairy cattle.

[…]

“I’m a farm girl, and it is a goal of mine to be able to promote family farms,” Stam said.

She said her rural upbringing taught her discipline and the importance of family and family tradition.

“This isn’t just a lifestyle — this is my lifestyle, and I am very blessed to be able to take this message to a national stage,” Stam said.

{My emphasis. — NPO]

How cool is that? Gary Truitt has more at Hat Chat

***

I’d initially decided not to enter this fray, not to enter the lion’s den, as it were, but, having been defended by souls kinder than I deserve, feel something of an obligation to speak for myself, ideally deflecting any criticism, infantile or, occasionally, rational, from them and toward me.

First, as others have noted, something strikes me as manifesting a sort of disconnection, a level of disingenuousness, if not outright hypocrisy, about criticizing me for voicing my disdain for Mr. Levin without actually having listened to his program and then calling me “an apparent moron” without knowing anything about me, the opinions I hold, the educational achievements on my record, or my writing beyond one apparently controversial online screed.

If, Mr Riehl, you bothered to read any of my relatively few postings as Post Right, or at my personal Weblog, then I retract this statement. However, nothing suggests that you did. On the other hand, I at least read summaries of Mr. Levin’s daily program before making any comments. This is, I agree, not the same as listening; however, notwithstanding any nuances or exceptions that he may offer during the show, these summaries, paired with writings of his available across the Web, suffice to paint a picture of his views. Also, I did take the time to read the debate between you and Mr. Friedersdorf, wherein Mr. Levin chimed in and wherein Conor excerpted the original broadcast segment that so appalled him. So, although I admit that I was perhaps venturing slightly beyond safe ground in waging my “war” against Mr. Levin, I have proceeded far more safely than you have, and I did do some legwork, so to speak.

Regarding the very first sentence of your post: I’m not sure why an anti-Levin screed at a Weblog hosted by The American Conservative surprises you as it does. The magazine’s non-mainstream perspective(s) are quite obvious. Some of your commenters, replying to your philippic against Mr. Ford, have called it a right-wing version of The Nation. That’s not quite right, but it does hit on the anti-war nature of the publication. I’m not sure that anything about being anti-war, particularly when our Wilsonian leaders find pretext for war just about anywhere, is anti-conservative. Taft, Kirk, et al., I think, would agree. I wholly admit that I may be wrong, given my age and the sadly small amount of Kirk that I’ve read, but he strikes me as having been a pretty anti-war sort of chap. TAC has a lot more in common with Kirk and Taft than with neoconservatives, the Republican Party, and mainstream conservatism.

Your comment about my attire in one picture is a bit perplexing, particularly given that you’ve apparently no eye for context. That photograph was actually taken on my family farm. There’s nothing Wyatt Earp-esque or Bad Bart-esque about it. I’m just a country boy; my family owns farmland, my grandfather’s been on that farm since 1914, and I drive our beat-up 1988 Chevy truck as often as I do my car. Such an ad hominem attack (if it’s even worthy of Latin) seems, to me, to below what passes for sincere, honest discourse about ideas. Again, I’m young: I may simply be missing out on the salient point here.

(Truth be told, I wish I’d one of my three-piece-suit photographs up; I’m curious to see how you’d have responded, especially if it had been one in which I’m wearing a pink shirt. I can only imagine what fun you may have had at my expense!)

The broader point about your linking to my Facebook profile, as Patrick addressed in response to your post about his input on this whole kerfuffle, is that, whether or not Facebook is public, linking to it is, in the words of a friend, “so sixth grade”. It’s useless (particularly given the ease wherewith I changed my profile picture) and, to those not in my network, not my “friends”, and not “friends” of my “friends”, the profile is inaccessible. Visitors who click on your link see my profile picture, my networks, and a couple of my “friends”. It’s not offensive or wrong; just silly and slightly creepy.

A grad student all of 26 years old, versus Mark Levin’s significant accomplishments in multiple fields – from Reagan’s White House to the bestseller’s list … but Mr. Wilson’s nemesis Dennis passes judgment without ever having listened to Mark’s show??? Spare me, please. At least the guy is honest enough to tell us just how utterly stupid he is right upfront with that revealing bit of idiocy.

(A quick, minor correction: I’m not a graduate student anymore, as I have earned my master’s degree, and I’m only twenty-five. Where you got twenty-six is a mystery to me, but not particularly relevant.) Although, I reckon, there’s something slightly impressive about having served in the White House, serving as a lackey to a Federal official, even the president, hardly wows me. I guess that’s the Anti-Federalist in me; I don’t trust the presidency, and I’m perpetually baffled by the right-wing adulation for a man whose policies were anything but fiscally conservative. Moreover, given the absolute rubbish that makes the bestsellers’ list (as I’m sure you and Mr. Levin both would agree), I’m not very interested in that feat. I’m not going to contend that Mr. Levin isn’t intelligent or successful; both are obvious. These facts neither make him any more qualified to comment than I am nor indicate a higher — or lower — level of intelligence. Yes, I did pass judgment without listening — though, as I’ve noted, I did at least do some legwork. Having listened, finally, to some of Mr. Levin’s program, I am only further convinced of the correctness of my beliefs. (See here, if you — or your readers — so desire: http://www.amconmag.com/postright/2009/07/01/one-more-levin-post-someone-stop-me/ ) I may be stupid and honest, as you charge; at least, as you also note, I’m honest.

In the comments to your post about Patrick, and in the post itself, you reject the label “neoconservative” for both yourself and for Mr. Levin. I’ve not read enough of your material to comment on you. However, I’m not sure that I agree with your assessment of Mr. Levin. “Neoconservative” is, mayhap, thrown about too easily, too frequently, by other conservatives (paleo, reformist, or otherwise) and by leftists; however, having listened to Mr. Levin claim that President Obama has a “hate-on for Israel” — a patently absurd comment to make —, and knowing of his strongly interventionist tendencies, I can only extrapolate that he, indeed, is at least moderately neoconservative. As I’ve noted a hundred times if once, he does seem to be sincere in his belief in limited government respecting domestic policy — and I haven’t heard or read enough to have a clear idea of where he falls on “social issue” —, so I’m willing to grant that maybe he’s not a pure neocon, but he certainly seems to have similar proclivities, and his interventionist tendencies restrict his respectable views on limited government to the point of making them irrelevant. The welfare state and the warfare state are pretty inextricably intertwined, as are expansion of government for the purposes of what Professor Bacevich and others refer to as “American exceptionalism” and the continued expansion of Federal interference with our lives. To paraphrase Mr. Levin, “There’s a reason why they push big government in foreign policy: Because it leads to bigger government at home, much more surreptitiously.”

AND NOW, relatively briefly, a few replies to some commenters.

*Rhod: I’m not sure that your characterization of TAC is quite right. There’s definitely truth to it, but it’s a very incomplete characterization. I only fit into one of those groups — the “isolationists” —, and it’s hardly how primarily describe my views. Also, since when is “crank” an epithet?

Don’t worry *SacTownMan, I’m well aware of the limits of my intelligence. However, I’m not sure what’s “NEW” about my conservatism. Though I’ve done copious amounts of reading (and “reading”) in my day, the breadth of my knowledge is limited. However, I do know enough to draw on Aristotle, Aquinas, Burke, Belloc, Kirk, Röpke, and others — none of whom I’d call “NEW”.

*mark l.: Don’t you think limiting political viewpoints to merely two poles, dubbed “liberal” and “conservative”, is both unhelpful and passé?

rather than arriving at a position based upon the two competing ideologies, they must calibrate their position relative to the other’s point on the line. It becomes a matter of defining their beliefs upon who they will not stand next to, rather than arrive at their locus based upon the primary, and only real, question.

I don’t even know what to make of this. I’ve been defining and re-defining my beliefs for a helluva lot longer than Mr. Levin’s been anywhere near my radar. I’d be more than happy to “stand next to” him on those issues where we agree, should I ever have to, but a “No Enemies to the Right” mentality is not my cup of tea.

*Mrs. Peperium:

Well Bush Derangement Syndrome had to go somewhere. And if it did, it couldn’t have focused on a more marvelous target – Mark Levin. You really do have to be deranged to think at 26 or 30 years of age you are in Mark Levin’s league. Why a 40 year old would be hard pressed to be in Mark’s league. Think about how many of Mark’s accomplishments a 26 year-old would have to outright dismiss to believe this about themselves. Positively breathtaking. These * writers * really ought to consider applying for a White House Fellowship – Obama could use them-well.

I’ve already addressed most of what you cover here, but I’ll return to one point. Age has very little to say, ultimately, an Mr. Levin’s feats in his life, though respectable, hardly put him in some unattainable seraphic or Elysian league. He’s just a guy with opinions; he just happens to have a microphone, experience that dazzles the vapid, and a vastly larger audience.

I’m not really sure that Mr Obama’s White House has any interest in someone like me. They seem generally to disapprove of localist, anti-interventionist, anti-corporate, anti-statist conservatives.

I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why you question our conservative credentials with asterisks; I guess all of that “big-tent” malarky proves itself to be what it is when someone inside the figurative tent dares to question someone else.

*Rob Crawford: That sounds like snark to me. Tsk, tsk.

“Caritas in Veritate“: Pope Benedict has a social encyclical due at month’s end.

“Call Me Skeptical”: Netanyahu, in my humble estimation, is a snake. A “sovereign” Palestine, as he envisions it, will be no freer of Israel than George W. Bush was of Dick Cheney.

“My Only Thoughts on Perplexing Persian Politics”: I sympathize with the reformists (although I question the reformist credentials of Mousavi), but believe that complete American inaction is the best course of American action.