Please read my friend and colleague Dan McCarthy on The PoMo Russell Kirk in the latest Reason.

One of McCarthy's observations strikes me as extremely important:

There is indeed common ground here between Kirkian traditionalists and postmodernists. Both camps try to conscript the uncertainty principle, mathematician Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and Einstein’s relativity into attacks on objectivity in other fields. The Kirkians and postmodernists share a fallacy, and ironically it is a species of scientism: They wrongly apply the ideas of advanced physics and mathematics to history. It turns out that when “science” casts doubt on objectivity, the otherwise science-skeptical Kirkians and postmodernists are all for it.

Lots of people gave my employers hell for our last issue's cover art.

Some of these same people want to support a campaign that makes this its closing pitch:

Fitting that on the day of the Iowa Caucuses, Reason magazine discovers that there is a libertarian in the race. Sure, sure, you say: Dave Weigel has been covering this Ron Paul thing from the start.

Absolutely. Wonderfully, in fact.

And Jesse Walker wrote a few pieces online too.

Yep.

But, according to this month's cover story,by Brian Doherty,

These Paulistas are what hopeful libertarians have fantasized about for decades: a disaffected but engageable mass of Americans, many of them hidden among the 45 percent or so who tend not to vote. They support an argument advanced by David Boaz of the Cato Institute and David Kirby of the America’s Future Foundation, who estimate, based on detailed polling data, that 9 to 14 percent of Americans hew to a roughly libertarian political ideology—and that this group has been shifting away from the GOP during the current Bush administration.

(Somehow I doubt David Boaz has been fantasizing about Ron Paul. Don't tell Ron Paul either, or else we might have another reason to call him Dr. No) So, if these Paulistas are a libertarian dream, why is it making the cover of the leading libertarian magazine six months after Paul made his big splash?

Normally I'm against the whole anti-cocktail-party critique of D.C. I want to be at the cocktail parties myself. They are nice. I want people who go to fancy cocktail parties to adopt my politics. I think that is one of the definitions of success. But indulge me for a moment:: it doesn't seem like D.C. libertarians were all that against the war in Iraq - at least when it counted. Ron Paul privileges fidelity to the Constitution more than, say, abortion rights. And that tamps down the enthusiasm of the Beltway set too.

There is a cultural divide in libertarianism. Reason stands for the future in which, presumably, we'll freely and capitalistically upload our brains and genitals onto a Vivendi-Murdoch server to our great pleasure and profit. Ron Paul talks about things in the past, like the Founder's vision for our country and the Constitution they wrote. How quaint!

Is the Ron Paul candidacy perfect? No. Should libertarians be falling over themselves to support him? Absolutely. In fact, his campaign has, in many respects been so poorly managed that I'm surprised it hasn't ruined his candidacy. Noteworthy also is the fact that this piece as many others did, profiled not the man, but the movement - which is more colorful than Paul himself.

Read the piece. It's better late than never. Welcome aboard Reason magazine, the beer is getting warm here. But most of us are friendly.

It seems like everyone in D.C. is trying to leave town early to get in some Christmas vacation before the Iowa Caucus. And so it's time to comment on the candidates and their holiday ads. I'd like to Grade them.

Candidate:Huckabee
Grade:A+
Alternate Title: What Would Be So Wrong if I Was Celebrating Christmas?

Analysis: Huckabee has no money to run this ad. So they light it just right to get the floating cross/bookcase effect, and Drudge goes nuts. Adding in the bit about "celebrating" the birth of Christ makes it just specific enough to have a "War on Christmas" topspin. Then when he's called on playing the Christian card, he makes himself even more likable. Well played.

Candidate:Giuliani
Grade: B
Alternate Title: Sweat my Sweater

Analysis: Reagan could pull off brown suits. I'm not sure Giuliani can pull of a red sweater. Other than that - just fine. Michael Crowley of TNR has noted Giuliani's strange "jokey" campaign - and this fits right into it. Think Giuliani will let Santa into American airspace after Jolly Saint Nick delivers presents to the Christians in Iran?

More Below the Fold 

Candidate:Clinton
Grade: C-
Alternate Title: Stocking Stuffer Social Justice

Analysis: Do Democrats really want to portray their social programs as gifts they are handing out? What's the weird font for "Happy Holidays?" I hate the reflexive hatred of Hillary Clinton. Yet, I still can't warm up to her - at all.

 
Candidate: Edwards
Grade:B
Alternate Title: Christmas is About Giving a Shit

Analysis: Edwards lacks the sartorial daring of Giuliani. But he talks about "miracles" in this season and promised not to forget the poor. At least Clinton is offering "Universal Pre-K". I bet the poor can count on her for that more than they can on Edwards' signs and wonders. He really knows how to telegraph "sincerity" with those brow gestures.

Candidate: Obama
Grade: A-
Alternate Title: My Wife is More Vibrant than I Am

Analysis: Cute kids really help any ad this time of year. Allowing the "C" word in the ad makes him seem less threatening. He'll meet with the enemies in the War on Christmas with no preconditions in his first year in office.

Candidate:Paul
Grade:A-
Alternate Title: More Fecund than The Mormons

Analysis: Red Shirt! Paul has a big-ass family and a really cute granddaughter (Polka dots). But why are you taking time off when your supporters just gave you over 6 million dollars in a day? I like how the music is "people-powered."

 Technically the following isn't a Romney commercial. But he's in it with his family and a lot of snow. So I'll link to it.

Tell me. Does that small scared child say "No!" just before Mitt launches him down the hill? (Right around :54 seconds into the video?)  

National Review endorsed Romney and their cover featured an ol' timey heroic painting of him. In keeping with the spirit of the season and the magazine, at The American Conservative, we've also put a painting of a candidate posing heroically on our cover.

Check out the three articles. Michael Desch on Giuliani's foreign policy team, Tom Piatak on the disaster of nominating a pro-choicer to lead a pro-life party, and Glenn Greenwald on Hizzoner's record of straining at the limits on his power.

The heavily-funded OB-GYN, Ron Paul, has been getting flack from liberals for opposing legal abortion. Yesterday, Dana Goldstein was aghast that Andrew Sullivan had chosen to endorse Paul. Her post is.... hilarious.

his tribute to Paul lionizes the Texas congressman as a classic "live-and-let-live" libertarian without ever mentioning the deep contradiction in his platform: Ron Paul is virulently anti-choice. First Dennis Kucinich said he would appoint Paul his V.P. And now Andrew Sullivan, defender of gay rights, idealizes the guy. Earth to liberals and moderate conservatives who value individual rights and liberty: Ron Paul is not your guy, at least not if you believe women deserve the same freedom as men.  - Dana Goldstein

Don't get too close to Paul! He might infect you with his virulent platform. Don't you believe "women deserve the same freedom as men"? We don't want to go back to the bad old days before Roe v. Wade when only men were allowed to get abortions.

Continuing:

What is "freedom and toleration" without a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny? What is an "ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble" without the acknowledgment that unplanned pregnancy, and the havoc it brings, are features of human life that can not be eradicated? What candidate who stands against "Christian meddling" would strengthen the theocratic movement by allowing states, in the name of religion, to repeal women's rights over their own bodies? 

Nice use of "destiny". Why, Ron Paul, won't you allow women to determine their pregnancies by allowing the stars to pre-determine them? Also, is it smart for pro-choicers to defend themselves by saying that "unplanned pregnancies" involve features of "human life that can not be eradicated." Presumably you can eradicate the "features of human life" that are in-utero.

But it isn't just Goldstein who loses all grasp of the English language and self-awareness when confronted by pro-lifers. Christopher Hayes, in an otherwise excellent article on the divisions of libertarianism, talks about Ron Paul's "full-throated rejection of the imperial project in Iraq and a radical vision of a stripped-down state (though, oddly, one that still forces pregnancy)."

You heard first it in The Nation. He may want to bring the troops home, but the Paul regime will still "force pregnancy."  (What will that Cabinet Department be called, Mr. Hayes?) Funny, most women I know aren't "forced" to become pregnant. (Sometimes they like a few drinks and a Dido record. Other times they ask for love and marriage)

Ezra Klein joined in on the enforced pregnancy meme as well: 

it's a bit hard to square the immense affection Ron Paul receives from putative civil libertarians with his intensely restrictive attitude towards such issues as whether a woman will be forced to use her body as a vessel for childbearing. -Ezra Klein

Ron Paul, why you gots to be so harsh with your "intensely restrictive attitude"? Can't you have casually unrestricted attitudes? Like Ezra Klein. "Vessel for childbearing--" how precious!!

Let's see. You're the conservative magazine that holds itself up as the authority on movement orthodoxy.

Do you endorse the pro-choice but pro-World War IV Giuliani?

Or the heroic author of the disastrous immigration compromise, McCain?

I think that Fred Thompson would have been the obvious, logical choice if his campaign weren't a flop. Sure he chased skirts in D.C. for years - but he has a credibly conservative legislative record.

But instead they chose the man Larison calls "the dancing fraud", Romney. The same guy who was to the left of most Red-State Democrats, but has flipped and flopped entirely over to the right. I actually don't mind the flip-flopping, it has almost all been in a direction I approve.

Among my small circle, we are now wondering: perhaps Romney is the best viable choice. Not for any of the reasons National Review cites, but for his obvious cravenness. After years of suffering under Bush's politics-of-conviction, I begin to warm to a guy who seems like he would never allow his approval ratings to go into the  20s in order to maintain the delusion that American military power can transform the Middle East into Middlebury, Conneticut. I know that a lot of people are looking to Obama or Huckabee for a politician they can believe in. I'd rather have a guy who has no core whatsoever, whose every belief is negotiable. The last thing we need in this country is steadfast leadership from a member of our political class.

In a must-read article by Christopher Hayes on Ron Paul's roots, Hayes gets at the divisions within libertarians and consults Justin Raimondo, the intrepid Rothbardian and head of Antiwar.com

There's the populist wing of the libertarian movement, and then there's the Washington crowd that's still trying to sell libertarianism, or their version of it, to elites. These people want to go along and get along. As long as they can abort their babies and sodomize each other and take as many drugs as they want to, they are happy. They don't care who is being killed in Iraq and how many Iraqis are dying. That's their hierarchy of values."

This quote has not only the advantage of truth, but also sublime irony. Justin is my hero today.

Sarah Posner's latest on Mike Huckabee and his critics is a textbook example of a certain kind of political commentary that is getting dull lately. It's  full of interesting information and good quotes but the point is that Huckabee isn't an orthodox conservative on economic or immigration issues and this may sink him. Okay. Posner refers to Huckabee's critics in rather heated terms:

For anyone who wonders why this charmer with a perfect record on the right’s core social litmus tests has not already wrapped up the Republican nomination, they need look no further than the disgruntled uber-conservatives who are spitting mad that Huckabee has been too nice to poor people and foreigners - Sarah Posner

This sort of article could be written from any liberal or conservative perspective. You can imagine this alternative:

For anyone who wonders why this successful mayor with a perfect record on the right’s core economic issues has not already wrapped up the Republican nomination, they need look no further than the disgruntled uber-conservatives who are spitting mad that Giuliani doesn't believe the earth is 6,000 years old and that a clump of cells deserves the same legal rights as a human being.

Now, Sarah Posner may not be writing an easy, opportunistic article. (Something that is awfully hard to avoid doing.) She may find pro-lifers to be misguided but idealistic. Creationists likewise harmless. She may not be tempted to write the above about Giuliani. This isn't about her. But I don't find these articles all that edifying. Hawkish conservatives have written many such pieces about Joe Lieberman, or the Casey's of Pennsylvania. All these articles say is "I, the commentator, find a few ideas of candidate X, a member of the party I normally oppose, admirable. His opponents in that party have base, irrational motives for attacking him. That says something awful about the party I normally oppose. That party only cares about greed/war/white supremacy/killing babies/whatever/

These articles are like the potato chips of our commentary diet. Filling and tasty, but not particularly healthy. And we know how Huckabee feels about empty calories. Here is my take on Huckabee in New Hampshire from this summer.

I'll be running around New Hampshire this weekend chasing the people who want to lead the free world between the years 2009 and 2013. If anyone wants to get together in Nashua, Concord, Manchester, North Conway, or even northern Mass for a drink, send me an e-mail or leave a comment and I'll send you an e-mail.

I got back from Cairo last night and you should expect something on the NDP and the situation in Egypt soon.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my piece on the recent Crystal Clear Atheism conference.

So, I'll be leaving Washington today on a week-long trip to Cairo, where I will cover the convention of the ruling "party," the NDP. Should be fun. Travel, especially the type that involves 10-hour flights and long waits at the airport, allows me to catch up on some reading. A friend has insisted that I'll love David Foster Wallace, and so I'll be reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again" while I wait in Dulles. If I like it, I'll try to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest in Arabic.

But when I'm traveling or on vacation I  prefer to reread novels that are sentimental favorites or non-fiction works that are important to me. As I pack up my carry-on (no toothpaste!), I thought I'd force my airplane reading selections on you. First up will be the seventh volume of Frederick Copleston's eminent History of Philosophy, the one covering the Post-Kantian Idealists, to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. 

Next up, the only novel on my list. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. I know, you are freaking out. But I actually found the book extremely moving. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I felt that Ellis' last novel, whose main character is Bret Easton Ellis  himself actually redeemed Ellis, the writer, from his own ego and his own excesses.

On the way back I'll be reading some Biblical theology: Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant by Ignace de La Potterie, SJ (my second Jesuit). Potteries's exegesis of the Marian passages of Scripture are just astonishing in their level of detail. Especially helpful is his discussion of John 6:41-47, in which the theologian explains and diagrams both the Concentric and Parallel Structures that Biblical authors employed in composing scripture.  

Finally, to politics, I'll be toting along my beat up edition of James Burnham's The Machiavellians, probably the most important book in shaping the way I think about politics. I have to thank Kevin Michael Grace for generously sending it to me a little over a year ago.  It's a second edition copy from 1943 and is full of pencil marks from its previous owner(s).

Other than that, I'll take a stack of the last month's men's magazines: Men's Vogue, Esquire, Details and GQ. Unfortunately, the TSA will make me check the bag containing my most valuable travel accessory.

Tim Russert finally gets the rough hand in a great little piece by Paul Waldman at The American Prospect.

Russert may be the only journalist in America who considers all his conversations with government officials off the record unless they request otherwise -- an extraordinary gift to the powerful and an inversion of ordinary journalistic practice -- but that doesn't make him an insider. Because he's from Buffalo.

My only problem with Waldman's piece is that it assumes "broadcast journalists" could (or once did) serve an important function as journalists. I can't think of any major broadcast figure who was lauded for his reporting. Instead they are all hailed from on high for possessing a quality. Jennings was dignified. Williams is warm. Murrow was authoritative. Browkaw was chewing on taffy. We should admit to ourselves that the Sunday Talk Shows are less entertaining versions of Conan O'Brien for people  convinced that television can edify them, or educate them about current events.

Why Am I Campaigning with a Democrat?

Because cheap gimmicks are the last thing you attempt before you declare a moral victory and return to the Senate. What do I win?

He started out using "pencil puppets" in his dorm room, then he interviewed Ron Paul and Mike Gravel there. Now James Kotecki is doing video work for Politico right down the street from me. He also looks surprisingly like my girlfriend's younger sister's boyfriend. His preview for today's Republican debate on CNBC is really fantastic, check out the picture they use to demonstrate "torture."

 
The hand movements are a little distracting- but it's fine work.. Check out his video-blog bio. I can't help but think he was using Michael Cera as a model. (Yes, that Michael Cera from Arrested Development and Superbad.)