A "Come to Jesus" Moment for the Right?

Andrew Klavan hits the nails on the head.  Number three is perhaps the most important:

Recently, a number of books by secular intellectuals have noted the disaster that is postmodern relativism—the nihilist philosophy that has corrupted and gutted Western liberal education. Education’s End, by Anthony T. Kronman, Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians, by Marcello Pera, and What Ever Happened to Modernism?, by Gabriel Josipovici, come to mind. All lament the abandonment of our commitment to the Great Conversation—the intellectual’s belief that the creative tension of the uniquely brilliant Western literary and philosophical canon can lead us in the direction of moral truth.

But the authors cannot fully grasp the nettle of the solution. Many assume that the Great Conversation depended on the sort of open mind only secularism can provide. As Kronman puts it: “Every religion insists, at the end of the day, that there is only one right answer to the question of life’s meaning,” thus rendering the pluralism of the Great Conversation impossible. I would contend the opposite: only the existence of a God in whose image we are created can support the notion of moral truth at all. It was always Judeo-Christianity, and that alone, that made the Great Conversation possible. Pera understands this intellectually, but cannot really plunk for faith. And therein lies the problem. The triumph of science, the comfort of Western life, and a sophisticated elite virulently hostile to religion have all contributed to an intellectual atmosphere of unbelief—a sense that atheism should be the default mode of reasonable, thinking people. That is a mere prejudice and needs to be answered in the culture, not with Bible-thumping literalism and small-minded judgmentalism—nor with banal happy-talk optimism—but by sound argument made publicly, unabashedly, and without fear. John Adams and the other Founders were right about this: an irreligious people cannot be free. Liberty lives in the palace of moral truth, and you can’t build that palace on the empty air.

Read the rest.

Urban Dictionary: Come to Jesus


Addendum:

I believe the lesson that liberals most need to learn is that moral order is a miracle, it is hard to achieve, and it is precious. And since the Enlightenment, since the eighteenth century, I think liberals have been too quick to knock down institutions, to want change, and to try to tinker and maximize—and when you do that, you often end up with anomie, or normlessness. People should read about the French Revolution. Growing up as a liberal, I always thought the French Revolution was this wonderful thing. It was an absolute nightmare. Of course, the king was a nightmare too. But the French Revolution shows the excesses of liberalism. And it ended with genocide, it ended with mass slaughter in Paris with the guillotine. It was an abomination, because they destroyed all their moral capital and they had chaos. And that excess is actually the founding event of modern conservatism. It’s people like Edmund Burke, who said we need to preserve institutions even if we don’t always understand them. We have to proceed carefully. So that’s the main lesson that I think conservatives can teach liberals. You’re got to be careful here...

If Romney Wins...

Conservatives' work is never done:

CALLER:  Too many Republicans apologize for wanting conservative fiscal policy, and we gotta stop apologizing for that, and I think we're there now.
RUSH:  Well, that's yet to be seen, but we're on the right road in that regard.  Look, I don't want to go there now.  I'm gonna do that after the election, but there are challenges....  

...if Romney wins, there will be a competition in the Republican Party for people who want to take credit for it.  Basically you're going to have two factions.  One faction will be the Republican establishment, which will say their strategy of moderation, cooperation, reaching across the aisle, not scaring the independents, Romney's first debate performance, that's what did it.  

The other faction will be the Tea Party and conservatives who will say, "If you guys don't wake up and realize that what won this election for you is this far-left agenda of the Democrat Party scaring this country to the point that people didn't want any more of it, if you don't realize what that means, you're gonna have to go back to the 2010 midterms. If you want to understand why Romney won this election, go back to the 2010 midterms.  Everything Obama stands for was rejected and there wasn't a Republican on the ballot then." 

CALLER:  That's right.  I agree. 

RUSH:  But that's for down the road.  That may not even materialize.  But if it does, that will be the... you know, even in the best families, there are arguments and there are disagreements, and it'll be the case here in due course.  But if Romney wins, there will still be a lot of work to do. 

Why a Conservative Voted for Obama (emphasis added)

Conservatives Have "Slipped" Away From Science (Gordon Gauchat, Stephanie Pappas)

Scientific insight or more junk science? Via Hot Air, Stephanie Pappas discusses a new report from Dr. Gordon Gauchat:

Politically conservative Americans have lost trust in science over the last 40 years while moderates and liberals have remained constant in the stock they put in the scientific community, a new study finds.

The most educated conservatives have slipped the most, according to the research set to appear in the April issue of the journal American Sociological Review.

...At the beginning of the survey, in the 1970s, conservatives trusted science more than anyone, with about 48 percent evincing a great deal of trust. By 2010, the last year survey data was available, only 35 percent of conservatives said the same.

Concern for bias in Stephanie's article starts with the title, "Conservatives Losing Trust in Science." This is considerably less neutral than the title of Gauchat's article, "Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere."

Gordon Gauchat calls his objectivity into question by agitating for Barack Obama starting with the first sentence of his article:

In the first months of his presidency, Barack Obama addressed the National Academy of Sciences to speak about U.S. science policy and a renewed commitment to fund scientific research. In this speech he charged: “We have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas” (White House 2010). The previous administration under George W. Bush was widely seen as unfriendly toward the scientific community. As a consequence, many scientific organizations and advocacy groups became concerned that political and ideological interests were threatening the cultural authority of science.

Gauchat then draws sloppy connections between conservative distrust for the scientific community and the policies of recent Republican administrations while labeling skepticism about the integrity of the scientific community and debate about the proper role of government in funding science as "anti-science." Moreover, as commenters at Hot Air are quick to note, Gauchat conflates distrust for the "scientific community" with distrust for "science."

I think that Gauchat greatly overstates his case in light of the fact that his data indicate that trust for the scientific community has been quite low among liberals and moderates as well (below 50% on average).

Liberals admit conservatives have upper hand on Twitter

Conservatives are winning an important battle.

From CNN:

"...[W]e are being out-organized on Twitter," said Gina Cooper, a blogger who helped organize Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of online liberal activists that met last week in Pittsburgh. "There is some catching up to do on the progressive side."

Tracy Viselli, who attended Netroots Nation, agreed with Cooper and admitted that liberal bloggers are ceding this valuable territory to conservatives.

"Conservatives are very tightly knit and getting their message out very well."

Are conservatives winning the message war because of the power of their "opposition energy", or have they simply congregated at the right place at the right time? If you're not already on Twitter, come and find out for yourself.

See you on Twitter.

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Great Twitter resource for Conservatives:

#tcot links...Tracking what conservative twitter users are discussing.

TCOT Report

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40 Compelling Reasons to Support Conservatism

These are the reasons I am a conservative:

• All men are created equal.  They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
  
• Once liberty is lost, it is rarely recovered.
  
• Private property and liberty are inseparable.
  
• The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. 
  
• The principal responsibility of the government is to the citizen. Otherwise, the government ceases to be legitimate.
  
• One-size-fits-all government fits no one well.
  
• A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
  
• An all-powerful government is the greatest threat to liberty.
  
• Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  
• The powers not delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution are reserved to the States or to the people.
  

• The Federal Government should make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
  
• No person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
  
• Equality is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor and to be treated impartially before a just law.
  
• Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.  
  
• The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
  
• The conservative despises tyranny.
  
• Redistribution of wealth for the "greater good" is tyranny in disguise.
  
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
  
• The only thing that can cure poverty is wealth.
  
• That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
  

• The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
  
• The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish (without risk) to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.
  
• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
  
• To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
  
• If the Constitution’s meaning can be erased or rewritten, and the Framers’ intentions ignored, it ceases to be a constitution but is instead a concoction of political expedients that serve the contemporary policy agendas of the few who are entrusted with public authority to preserve it.
  
• To say that the constitution is a living and breathing document is to give license to arbitrary and lawless activism.
  
• The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
  
• A people cannot remain free and civilized without moral purposes, constraints, and duties.
  
• The individual is more than an abstract statistic or faceless member of some group.
  
• Taxation of private property or the regulation of such property so as to reduce its value can become in effect a form of servitude, particularly if the dispossession results from illegitimate and arbitrary state action.
  

• The individual knows better how to spend that which he has earned than do large bureaucracies populated by strangers who see classes of people rather than individual human beings.
  
• Private property rights serve the common good: "What belongs to no one is wasted by everyone. What belongs to one man in particular is the object of his economy and care." 
  
• The conservative opposes crony capitalism where the Statist uses the power of government to subsidize one favored enterprise at the expense of another.
  
• The government is obligated to qualify immigration to those most likely to contribute to the well-being of the civil society.
  
• If a nation does not show and teach respect for its own identity, principles, and institutions, that corrosive attitude  is conveyed to the rest of the world, including newly arriving aliens.  And if this is unchecked, the nation will ultimately cease to exist.
  
• The moral imperative of all public policy must be the preservation and improvement of  American society.
  
• If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for war.
  
• Great nations have responsibilities to lead and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile because they might just wind up lowering our flag.
  
• Civil society is a harmony of interest, not a zero sum game in which the politically powerful exploit the politically weak.
  
• Free people working in self-interested cooperation, and a government operating within the limits of its authority promote more prosperity, opportunity and happiness for more people than any alternative.

There are two options: liberty and tyranny.  Which will you choose?

Sources: The Constitution of the United States of America, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, the Declaration of Independence, and many others.  We stand on the shoulders of giants.

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Cruise Control Conservatism

Conservative values are still very popular in America. But conservatives need to be more involved at the grassroots level in order to translate that popularity into favorable results. And the conservative effort has to be a continuous process, not just something we pick up at election time. Yes, conservatives are busy making a living and turning the wheels of capitalism. But if we don't take a break to get more politically involved, we are going to loose everything for which we are working so hard.

With an energized conservative base, we can prevent disasters like the election of Barack Obama. We can prevent the nomination of lukewarm GOP candidates like John McCain. But we have to be intensely involved at every stage of the game. Cruise control conservatism doesn't work.

Think about this: if conservatives had rallied behind a strong candidate during the primaries, would the Democrats have decided they could afford to nominate Obama, a candidate on the extreme left? Or would they have decided they couldn't take that risk? A weaker GOP leads to a more reckless Democratic party. Then we all suffer.

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