Motus Mentis

Well, we made it. Having dropped four-and-a-half inches of rain into the lobster pot I left out on the deck, Earl, hurtling northeast into oblivion, is now watering the meadows and forests of the Canadian Maritimes. In its wake, the weather today in the Outer Cape is splendid: clear, dry, breezy and cool, and everyone is much relieved to have been spared a direct hit. (Amazingly, the power didn’t even go out.)

So, back to loafing for another few days.

Meanwhile, with the summer winding down, the mind goes wobbling back, however foolishly, to worldly matters. If you are interested, here’s a soberingly pessimistic article about the realistic prospects of conservatism in America, even given what all observers agree will be a bad November for the Left. An excerpt:

What will change?

Will ObamaCare be repealed? Almost assuredly not. There is virtually zero chance that the Republicans will control both houses by the two-thirds majority necessary to override Obama’s certain veto of any repeal effort.

Will illegal aliens be deported and the Mexican border sealed? No. Sen. McCain (whose signature legislation sought to make First Amendment freedoms illegal during election campaigns) will join forces with Obama and Sen. Graham to grant amnesty to the 12 to 15 million illegal aliens already here, during a time of 10% unemployment.

And another:

What would a truly conservative America look like? It is unrealistic to argue, as some conservatives and Tea Partiers do, for a return to Jeffersonian libertarianism, no matter how desirable that may be. If conservatives were able to scale the power of today’s federal leviathan back to “merely” post-New Deal levels, it would be an enormous achievement.

Let us suppose for a moment that the conservative goal was merely the preservation of the cultural values and international status of the America of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era (arguably the apogee of American power and influence). What, then, would be on the conservative agenda?

-A civil rights movement based on individual equality, not group entitlements and reverse discrimination against whites and Asians;

-Mandatory military training and conscription;

-A muscular foreign policy in which America stands up to its enemies, as JFK did during the Cuban missile crisis, rather than the Obama foreign policy posture of a beaten dog piddling in submission;

-Balanced or low-deficit budgets, with social spending limited to pre-Great Society “safety-net” minimums;

-A non-P.C. acknowledgment that enemies (then communists, now Muslim fanatics) seek to use America’s freedoms as a tool to destroy it from within;

-The unapologetic deportation of illegals, e.g., Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” in 1954;

-The maintenance of American industrial and technological superiority;

-Social issues such as abortion and homosexuality left up to state legislatures as the Founders intended, rather than declared “constitutional rights” by activist judges;

-The public acknowledgment of a nonsectarian “civic religion” based on the Judeo-Christian tradition; and

-Unions investigated by the federal government for corruption and racketeering, and a non-unionized public sector.

Conservatives must be under no illusions that the Left would regard such an agenda as “fascist” and react violently if such an agenda ever came close to being implemented.

I could certainly quibble with some of those bullet-points (I’m sure some of you would quibble with them all), but it’s a thoughtful essay, and worth a look.