All patriotic Americans know of the Spirit of ’76, as in 1776. It is a spirit of independence, of self-reliance – or, looking to individual, ordinary people as the core strength of America and the power behind America’s greatness. That sort of ‘spirit,’ or mentality, logically leads to the call for a limited government, one that does not stifle free enterprise (the whole thing about “taxation without representation” was one of the main issues that drove us to cut the umbilical cord from the mother country, after all), and one that does not try to micromanage individual and interpersonal behavior (read: no “speech codes,” and no “sexual harassment” laws). In terms of foreign policy, that spirit is embodied by the Revolutionary era American flag, which had the alternating horizontal red and white stripes and a snake in the middle. Underneath was a script with a clear warning to would-be enemies: “[D]on’t tread upon me.” A similar flag from that era was also popular in the rebelling States.

   The Spirit of ’76 also provides the underpinnings of American Exceptionalism, the idea that there are reasons behind the fact that we have succeeded in many ways where before many nations and empires had failed. The aforementioned animus also encompasses a strong faith component. For all the revisionism that our Founding Fathers were “deists,” they all routinely appealed to a higher power, and routinely sought the blessings of an Almighty God – as understood through a Judeo-Christian lens – to guide them as leaders and to protect this young nation as a whole. George Washington prayed in church for guidance shortly before being inaugurated as our first president, and later in his term was the first to call for setting aside an official holiday to give thanks to God for the many blessings he had bestowed upon America (roughly 73 years later, Abraham Lincoln would finally make Thanksgiving an official holiday in 1863). All of this suggests a requirement that to maintain success both as an individual and as a society, it remains paramount to be able to acknowledge, at the very least, that there are bigger things out there than oneself.

   All in all, it comes as no surprise that the Spirit of ’76 is part of the driving force behind traditional Americans of past areas and those on the right side of the ideological spectrum in this modern era. Contrast that with the “Spirit of ’68,” as in 1968, which animates the modern left. Rich Lowry of National Review points out that what’s left out of the nostalgic accounts of young baby boomers coming of age in the 1960s and rebelling against their parents and “the system” is the nihilism, that ideological wrecking ball of tearing down tradition for the sheer, ephemeral thrill of it. In a past essay, I pointed out that the Republicans are the party of delayed gratification and working towards the future, whereas the Dems are all about the ephemeral here and now. That drive for instant gratification derived from rebellion, and the underlying nihilism that fueled said drive, is the ugly truth behind young, degenerate hippies then and the toxic leftist ideology they spawned.

   Everything these degenerate, spoiled brats stood for flew directly in the face of everything that previous generations had worked hard to build and fought/died to protect. Heeding the call for self-sacrifice and to protect America, the Greatest Generation came through. In so doing, they fought and bled to defeat the twin evils of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After they came home, through their hard work, they built the biggest, strongest middle class the world had ever seen:  one that continues to grow and flourish to this day. The grand irony in all of this is that the children of the Greatest Generation (not all, but at least enough to cause lasting damage to our society and culture) ended up giving rise to the Spirit of ’68, one that eschews delayed gratification, self-sacrifice, service in the form of protecting our nation, rewarding risk-taking and high productivity, and acknowledging the wisdom of those who came before you. 

   Monogamy was rejected in place of “free love.” Private property was seen as fascist, whereas communal property was seen as, like, cool. If you were poor, it was because evil corporations run by Adolf Eichmann clones were deliberately bleeding you dry. The Spirit of ’68 also dictated that love of country and American Exceptionalism were tantamount to evil, and in place came the celebration of world citizenship and denouncing America as racist, sexist, bigoted and homophobic. The adherents of the Spirit of ’68 called for “liberation” by hijacking Ivy League campuses and holding employees of those universities hostage with threats of escalating violence. Over time, this trend towards anarchy-as-“liberation” gave rise to the exact opposite of that against which they were ostensibly rebelling, as Rich Lowry chronicles.

   The self-centered flower children might have been anti-war, but that did not stop them from resorting to violence and related threats to have their way. Some radical leftists such as Barack Obama’s close friend Bill Ayers led the Weathermen Underground, who literally wanted to “bring the war home to America” and engaged in terrorist bombings on our own soil. The young idealists might have been rebelling against an authoritarian system, but authoritarian coercion turned out to be quite convenient for implementing “speech codes,” micromanaging individual relationships, and every other aspect of our lives.

   Whereas with the Spirit of ’76 there is a deep, abiding faith in its adherents that this is a blessed land of a chosen people (to quote the late Ronaldus Magnus), the adherents of the animus conjured up in 1968 reject what they have deemed to be an overly simplistic notion. 

   The gaps in the ‘spiritual’ sense (no pun intended!) perhaps speak the biggest volumes. Whereas the Spirit of ’76 includes acknowledgement of the blessings of Divine Providence as a prerequisite for understanding just how privileged one is to be American, The Spirit of ’68 sees all progress coming from Man and Man alone. Translation: conservatives worship God, while leftists worship the secular. Indeed, liberalism in its modern form has become its own ersatz religion (with abortion being the cult’s sacrament), a quasi-faith that is far more liberating to its adherents than the genuine, Judeo-Christian variety that reminds us there is a judgmental God out there and He would like for us to stay on the straight and narrow. This accounts for why those who spawned the Spirit of ’68 are overtly hostile to the Ten Commandments, as Michael Medved eloquently explains in a recent blog post. As inconvenient as this truth may be, those on the “religious right” and the “religious” left are therefore, in many ways worshipping two different gods. Conservatives of faith use themselves as vehicles to worship God, whereas leftists who give lip-service to religion actually just use God as a vehicle to worship themselves. No wonder the libs hate the “Big Ten:” the first commandment demands that they put no god before the Almighty, and yet they do so as a matter of routine!

   The ‘so-what’ in all of this is that the two presidential candidates are respectively faithful to these opposing Spirits. For all his faults, John McCain is a rather decent adherent to the Spirit of ’76. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is the most faithful, steadfast follower of the Spirit of ’68 than any other candidate in our nation’s history. The company he has kept for 20+ years with people who have dedicated their lives to destroying everything America stands for (e.g., Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Michael Pfleger) demonstrates that he is in the ’68 camp, rejecting the ’76 ideas. This alone should properly guide our voting decisions as we show up to the polls on Election Day. Come early November, we have a crucial opportunity to protect the Spirit of ’76 from a deadly assault by its hostile adversary.

            The problem with this perception, though, is that overall, it is simply not true. When looking at certain snapshots and certain bills voted on in Congress, one is certainly apt to believe the late Gov. Wallace. But just by looking at the sharp ideological contrasts between the parties – the difference in policy preferences between the parties today is as great as has ever been – makes one instantly reconsider that observation. At almost every turn, the party differences run to their very cores.

            Indeed, in this day and age, it is almost impossible to keep up with all the myriads of differences between the donkey and the elephant, forget biological/taxonomical features of the mascot animals themselves. The adversarial comparisons are almost enough to fill up a book; for instance, one classic comparison is that of the party – supposedly – of business interests vs. the party of – supposedly – farmers and laborers. That comparison alone keeps the knuckle-dragging union Neanderthals supporting crooked labor organizations that in turn fill the coffers of the Dems.

            But the comparisons certainly don’t stop there. One comparison I particularly enjoy is the party of the easily-offended (the Democrats, obviously) vs. the party of the not-so-easily offended. Implicit in this contrast are ideological differences themselves, where feigned offense on the party of the Democrat faithful becomes a clandestine approach towards stifling speech with which they happen to disagree and have no substantive arguments to counter the very substance of the assertion with they seem to be offended. This Party of the Easily Offended, after all – or at least party members – are the ones responsible for political correctness, defined simply as roadblocks to the truth set up by those who cannot deal with the truth.

            If economics is your interest, the comparisons there are quite stark, too, with multiple option as well: the Keynesians vs. the Supply-Siders, the party of tax-and-spend vs. the party of it’s-your-money, the party of the Soviet-style central planners vs. the party of the free marketers. All of these comparisons denote deep ideological differences between the respective adherents, between those who are convinced that the government knows best how to distribute money and those who think that free individuals know what to do best with their own money. The latter group, of course, is in good company, as those are the same basic principles outlined by Adam Smith in his historically influential magnum opus The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, the same year we declared our independence from the British crown (coincidence? I’m apt to think not!). Oh, and did I mention that the Dems are the party of equality-first – especially when it comes to personal income! – whereas the Republicans are the party of liberty-first? Again, this boils down to fundamental differences between the ideological left and right, respectively.

            Even in presidential elections of recent years, the differences between not only where a president should stand for on the issues are quite noticeable (is anyone out there crazy enough to think that there wasn’t sufficient difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry? How about between Reagan and Carter?), but there seems to be a fundamental difference in how both parties approach the very role of President of the United States.

            To that end, another timely contrast between the two parties has emerged, the Party of Senators (Democrats) vs. the Party of Governors (Republicans). Even casual observers could note that senators and governors go about their jobs differently. True, both need votes to get re-elected, but how they go about getting those votes alone seems to be fundamentally different oftentimes. Senators are like babies with hammers, because when infants get such a tool in their hands, everything becomes a nail to be hit. They – particularly liberal Democrat Senators – need to act like everything is going to Hades in a handbasket, and only they can reverse such a drastic decline by enacting radical, broad-sweeping pieces of legislation to give the government more license to step in and supposedly right all wrongs. Governors, meanwhile, are, at their core role, administrators – business managers, essentially. Good business managers don’t think they have to “do it all:” rather, they find specialists capable of handling different roles requiring different skill sets, and they delegate the responsibility accordingly. Presidents essentially fill the same roles on a national as opposed to the state level. To be sure, many governors from both parties – some presidents, too – might panic during an election year and succumb to the temptation or trying to act like the people’s savior in order to buy off votes with taxpayer dollars, but by doing so, those governors/presidents betray their fundamental roles as administrators (trying to act like lawmakers instead of business managers).

            That striking difference holds up even in this unusual election of 2008. Although the nominees of both parties are current U.S. Senators, this is the first time a senator will win the presidency since 1960 when JFK upset then-VP Richard Nixon. Other than the anomalies of 1960 and this year, over the past 30+ years, presidents have come up through the VP ranks, or those of governors. What is particularly telling is that that only Democrats to win the presidency during that same span of time – Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton – were also governors from right-leaning states. Ah, the irony!

            But what of this 2008 anomaly, where no matter who wins, we’ll have a senator become president? In this case, one must look at the vice presidential picks. Barack Obama chose…another senator, Slow Joe Biden, who acts like he has “foreign policy experience,” but in reality is one of the relatively few senators left who has been around long enough to get it all wrong on the Cold War as well as the War on Terror. Meanwhile, McCain chose a governor – Sarah Palin of Alaska – for his Veep nominee, thus once again proving that the contrast in question remains valid.

            Be it the approach towards economic policy, foreign affairs, or the very nature of the office of the president, the differences between the two major parties could not be more pronounced. Rather than wallow around in cynicism, it is important we keep these differences in mind as we file into the polls come early November.

            A recent blog entry-article came to my attention regarding the small issue of the University of Colorado endowing a chair on “Conservative Studies” (no joke!). This is surprising on many fronts, considering the overwhelming liberalism one is apt to encounter at most major universities and colleges, for those of the leftist ideological stripe in those lines of work usually consider conservatives as being either clinically insane or downright too mean-spirited to allow themselves to be as enlightened as the anointed in academia. Being academically-inclined myself, this is an issue that is near and dear to the heart of yours truly, as it is my goal to become an academic in the disciplines of business (one of the few areas of academia where one is apt to encounter a substantial amount of conservatives!).

What makes this development regarding the CS chair all the more surprising, though, is that it is to be endowed at the University of Colorado, one of the most insanely left-wing of already very liberal state universities. For example: at almost any major state college/university you visit or attend, there is plenty of liberalism to go around, albeit in varying degrees from school to school. You will find Purdue to be overall less liberal that, say, Indiana University, though the liberalism there is nothing compared to the leftism found at the University of Michigan, to say nothing of Wisconsin. Furthermore, even though the South is considered to be a very conservative region of the country, you’ll still encounter plenty of liberalism at the Universities of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. But at all of these places, both north and south – with a slight exception to IU – the overall community support for things like the schools’ football teams are staggering. Indeed, at the SEC schools and their home states, their schools’ gridiron squads represent a way of life. 

This is not the case at places such as Colorado U or Cal-Berkeley, where the communities are so left-wing that their ability to see the forest through the trees waved by-by to the hippies long ago. Thus, even though at places like Michigan, the liberal communities in Ann Arbor are gung-ho for the Wolverines, at Colorado U, the arch-liberal communities in Boulder end up being downright hostile toward the Buffaloes. Same thing goes for the whacko Berkeley communities and their hostility towards the Cal Golden Bears. The reason for such hostility can vary considerably, but it all boils down to either the logical extreme of associating the football teams with the military industrial complex – one of the favorite bogeymen of the left and even some on the extreme right – or that a manly sport like football represents the oppressive patriarchy of Western society – as if Eastern cultures and African tribal “societies “ are that much more feminized!

To sum things up, though, I find myself agreeing with the author’s piece regarding the endowment of the “Conservative Studies” chair at CU. Yes, the suffocating liberalism at CU and other colleges is an important issue because of the possibility of indoctrinating generations of youth into worshipping false gods, but this is not the way to address it. Rather, my solution would be an economic approach. Stop donating money to the schools, or at least to the liberal arts schools where much of this insane leftism originates. Business schools, engineering schools, medical schools and computer schools to the society in general and students in particular important services of providing training for marketable skills. As much as I love liberal arts studies, that which one is apt to learn there is not nearly as marketable as coming up with a formula for a plastic to be put into a car dashboard or loading critical software onto a business’ mainframe. Hence, donating money to such technical schools is worthy. Sending money to liberal arts schools, however, encourages leftism to continue to fester. If you want ideological reform and want school administrators to heed your [our] concerns, then derail the money train. There is no sound that will grab the ear of school administrators like the sound of closed wallets.

            Dr. Thomas Sowell, as an aside in his latest column, makes a point identical to one of mine in my piece on the Millenial Generation. Of course, it always sounds better coming from Dr. Sowell! Nevertheless, the point remains most valid. Why does Barack Obama have such strong support from young people? The same reason applies to why the authors of the book “Millenial Makeover” claim that the Millenials are liberal by a 2:1 margin: young is another name for inexperience, and the thrust of my previous piece was that Millenials’ alleged liberalism can be self-correcting over time with real-world experience.

On that note, it is worth encouraging all who are willing to listen not to underestimate the value of experience and the good judgment that eventually comes with it. Those on the left are apt to carp at those of us on the right because we admonish Obama for his questionable associations, first with the whacko pastor Jeremiah Wright, later with the controversial (dare I say ‘white-hating’?) priest Michael Pfleger, and now we have found out he is friends with the leader of The Weathermen terrorists, a far-far-far left radical group that actually did kill innocent people. Lest any liberals try to play the ‘guilt-by-association’ card, this much is worth noting.

Electing somebody to the office of president is like drafting a quarterback. Alright, so it is not entirely like picking a QB for one’s team, but there are enough similarities to get this point across. Why do some NFL quarterbacks excel at their position, while others struggle? The one trait that all successful QBs in the pros (the Manning Brothers, Brady, Brees, Hasselbeck, etc.) have is the ability to make good decisions. In other words, it all comes down to judgment. Quarterbacks who have struggled at that level (Daunte Culpepper comes to mind)have shown a profound lack of good judgment.

Back to Obama; as trite as it is to say, a man is known by the company he keeps. The people with whom we choose to closely associate reflect what kind of judgment we have. Rev. Wright has been the leading male figure in Obama’s life for two decades, and Obama kicked off his state senate campaign in the mid-‘90s in the home of William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn. As Hugh Hewitt reminds us, this shows that Obama is a man of poor judgment, hence unfit to be President of the United States on this basis alone, forget the fact that he is the most hard-left candidate ever to run for the Oval Office.

“Have Uncle Sam pay for health care? Hey, that's like, neat. But they also say that Millennials favor systems that give them lots of choices. They want to mouse-click on the option they prefer. This, of course, is in conflict or at least tension with systems in which government makes choices for you. If young voters' positive disposition to government programs gives Democrats an opening, their preference for choices gives Republicans one, too.”

   That many CIA and State Department officials and lackies alike have also worked to undercut President Bush in his own administration comes as no surprise to anybody in the political cognoscenti. After all, as Barone himself points out:

“Civilian and military, those who have been undercutting administration policy do so in the belief that their views are more in the nation's interests than the conclusion of the Texas cowboy whom the voters somehow elected president. State and CIA are filled with professionals educated in elite universities dominated by the left and, while not as wacky as their professors, have come away with the default assumption that liberals are always right.”

   With that sort of default assumption in mind, it certainly explains the lack of American Exceptionalism in these crucial divisions of the Executive Branch. What is truly disturbing, however, is that there seems to be a similar trend (minus the lack if AE, thankfully) afoot in the military:

“Many military officers, who increasingly have graduate degrees from such universities, seem to have imbibed similar habits of mind.”

   Nor does the concern end there. Barone points out another tendency where high-ranking officers assigned to a world region, like diplomats, end up “going native,” which explains Fallon’s insistence on Israel caving in to Palestinian demands at every turn. I would welcome solutions to this “native” problem from someone with deeper foreign policy insight, say, Frank Gaffney or Oliver North (whose own piece on Fallon can be found here).  On the bright side of things, it does seem as though Sec. Robert Gates did his part in outing this renegade.

   As an aside, it has been speculated that one reason for Fallon’s resignation, timed right after a puff piece was written on him in Esquire magazine, was to position him as a possible Veep candidate for either Hillary or Obama. Such a development would not surprise yours truly – a former military officer on the ticket could theoretically help boost the foreign policy credentials of either Dem candidate (i.e., not looking so soft on defense). Then again, ask Gen. Wes Clark how well that worked in the party of defeat and retreat.

            An interesting bit of scientific and geographic insight the Sen. Hutchison shares is the nature of Venezuelan oil. The reason that Saudi oil is so popular is that, in addition to it being very plentiful, it is also some of the easiest oil to refine into gasoline. Not so with the South American stuff, which has a large tar content and even larger sulfur content, and is this more difficult – and expansive – to refine into gas than most oil found elsewhere. Most of the refineries that are set up for this are along the U.S. Gulf Coast, meaning that, as the Senator from the Lone Star State herself points out, “Mr. Chavez needs us more than we need him.”

     I’ve long admired Michael Medved as a radio host and as a commentator in general. His grasp of American history leaves even yours truly amazed – and I teach it as part of my job! During the early part of the Republican presidential primaries, though, I was a bit put off by his unabashed support for McCain while I and lots of other party activists were fervently in favor of Mitt Romney. Medved, however, clearly has been on the winning side, considering that his man became our nominee for the White House. But it’s not over yet for us Romney fans, as our man Mitt is clearly the best choice for the VP slot, and this time, Michael backs us up. Let’s hope he’s as right this time as he was in predicting who would win the bigger nomination.  Naturally, Hugh Hewitt weighs in on this growing movement as well, listing some additional benefits of adding Romney to the ticket.  At this rate, all this is potentially very good news for us Romney fans:  OurManMitt could have new life in his campaign yet! 

 This is an excellent, straight-forward piece that explains to conservatives why we must check whatever disagreements we’ve had with McCain at the voting poll door. Goodness knows there have been times in the recent past where we right-wingers have barely been able to abide the senior senator from Arizona.  But let's face it; the War on Terror, judges, Bush’s tax cuts, and controlling the spending are too crucial of issues to be given up in a temporary fit of pique.

           Michael Barone has an important piece today regarding the ’08 electoral map. His bottom-line advice: don’t take any state for granted this time around, and don’t write off states we have lost in 2000 and ’04. Whatever changes that are in store for the map are not attributable to paradigm shifts in the electorate per se, rather, Barone pins them on different characteristics in the two major candidates. 

New voters are up for grabs, and there are aspects of McCain and Obama that appeal to different young demographics. More mature voters (and I use that term loosely) that were turned off by President Bush’s religiosity and Texas swagger – not that I was, mind you! – might be apt to give McCain a more serious look.

Some states, I think, can continue to be taken for granted, with Indiana being one of them. It doesn’t matter whom the GOP nominates; Indiana has gone for the Republican candidate since 1964. I would also not expect the Mountain and Great Plains states to go “blue” anytime soon, not with electorates that are thoroughly repulsed by the Dems’ cultural liberalism. Ditto for the Deep South, but some states in that approximate region concern me, namely Kentucky, Arkansas and West Virginia. Florida we can keep in the fold with someone like McCain, who appeals to many demographics in that state.

As Obama is 95 percent likely at this point to get the Democrat nomination, we can probably write off Illinois, but perhaps a state like Pennsylvania is back in play. Bush campaigned hard in the Keystone State in both 2000 as well as 2004, but lost both times; perhaps McCain can finally help that state turn the corner. If that is so, then it could off set the possible loss of Ohio, assuming that we lose the Buckeye State this time around. Whatever the case may be, Barone is spot-on in recommending that the folks on the Straight Talk Express do some serious polling in as many states as possible so we can attempt to figure out the shifting patterns of colors on the map come November.

To be sure, this all could be classic over-thinking. In another sense, if McCain can put together a credibly conservative platform for ’08, then he should have the upper hand. We have not elected a self-professed liberal to the presidency since 1964, which is why Obama runs away from that word every time he hears it. Sooner or later, enough people will read his books to find out that he cannot be honest with the people about where he truly stands. If so, then that alone could keep enough states “red” to keep the White House in GOP hands.

         As mentioned in my tribute entry on the late, great, Bill Buckley, the tributes continue to roll in. The best of the latest crop is none other than Jonah Goldberg’s, who assumed the role of “Editor-at-Large” of National Review after Buckley stepped down. Goldberg does an outstanding job of chronicling he historical trends of collectivism that Buckley sought to put a stop to starting in the 1950s, trends which I only hinted at in my piece. Also, I referred to Buckley as someone who “assumed the role of Atlas…holding up the sky.” After reading Goldberg’s tribute, I have concluded that perhaps that was an erroneous metaphor; read the piece, and the reader will understand why.