“Yes, we can” what? Ruin the country?

  • Con­ser­v­a­tives are sup­posed to be being con­cil­ia­tory right now. We’re sup­posed to be act­ing classy and doing all that ele­gant stuff like con­grat­u­lat­ing Obama and tak­ing our right­ful place as the losers with the ‘good sport’ pin on our lapel.

    That’s baloney. I’m a sore loser, and I’m hon­est enough to admit it.

    In a way, though, it’s more obvi­ous than ever that Obama was right about one thing: This elec­tion wasn’t really about him. It was really just the period at the end of the sen­tence. Amer­ica was the last coun­try where robust con­ser­vatism — or any cul­tural anti­dote to the all-consuming lib­er­al­ism that has swamped the West­ern world — was even pos­si­ble. But Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism was too cor­rupted by GOP glut­tons to sur­vive. It was also too out­num­bered, too unwel­come and too dis­cour­aged in its own coun­try. I don’t see how it can come back from the suf­fo­ca­tion of a hos­tile media, hos­tile aca­d­e­mic world, hos­tile rad­i­cal fringe, hos­tile Con­gress AND a hos­tile pres­i­dent. (And yes, I do think Prez-elect Obama will be hos­tile to con­ser­v­a­tives. He said in his accep­tance speech that he will be “everyone’s pres­i­dent,” but as Mary Pop­pins would say, that’s a piecrust promise — eas­ily made and eas­ily bro­ken. Who will call him on it if he reneges? The New York Times? Oprah? Meet the Press? Give me a break.)

    I don’t blame sec­u­lar peo­ple for putting us under vir­tual sharia law, but I don’t under­stand the Chris­tians that didn’t get it. Con­ser­vatism was not Chris­tian­ity, only an ide­ol­ogy, but it was an ide­ol­ogy that at least allowed for the pos­si­bil­ity that the Chris­t­ian nar­ra­tive of sin and redemp­tion might be true. What place is there for (lower case o) ortho­dox or (upper case O) Ortho­dox Chris­tians in the ratio­nal­ist lib­eral world­view where ‘sin’ is a polit­i­cally incor­rect word and ‘redemp­tion’ is avail­able only in a watered-down ver­sion that has noth­ing to do with the real­i­ties of heaven and hell? How could devout Chris­tians have been unclear on the wel­come that awaits them in the New World Order? Hadn’t we already noticed that we were increas­ingly being tol­er­ated only inso­far as we were seen and not heard and — more to the point — as long as the Good News of sal­va­tion through Jesus Christ was nei­ther seen nor heard?

    Appar­ently not. So what do we get now?

    Well, a lit­tle peace and quiet, I sup­pose. I don’t think it’ll last — the world’s ver­sion of it never does — but maybe it’ll make some peo­ple feel good for a while. I envy them, I guess. Not much to feel good about for me in Pres­i­dent Obama’s America.

    (I’m going to shut off the com­ments on this post. I don’t usu­ally do that, but I have a feel­ing that some of you, with the very best of inten­tions, might say exactly the wrong thing, and I’m really not in a mood to argue. No offense.)


    Related posts:

    1. Con­ser­vatism and morality
    2. Rad­i­cal Rosie
    3. The elec­tion of ’08 in a week
    4. Pres­i­den­tial wanna-be’s and the great national debate
    5. More on Miers

    November 5th, 2008 | Grace | Comments Off |

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