By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Political wise guys would have you believe that conservatives these days have but two options: either assisted living in a senior community or a bed in a hospice. We are headed for the ash heap of history, where we will be buried without honors — a footnote, at best, to 20th-century politics.
It has happened again. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, referred to by Paul Krugman the other day as "a longtime conservative," has essayed in the New Republic the modern conservative movement and traced us all back to John C. Calhoun.
Milton Friedman, the great economist, was one of a handful of intellectuals whose work forms the foundation for the modern conservative movement. He has been dead since 2006, but this week would be his centennial. He lived a long and prodigious life.
Here I am on the campaign trail, frenetically promoting my book, "The Death of Liberalism." I appear on scores of radio interviews, in and out of the studio. I appear on Fox News and C-SPAN.
Give the late William F. Buckley credit: The witty conservative writer, editor, talk-show host, debater and bon vivant was unafraid to allow liberal biographers extensive access to his life and private papers. In 1988, socialist true-believer John B. Judis published his wide-ranging, well-researched "William F. Buckley Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives."
The Great Denial continues. The liberals continue to labor under the assumption that nothing very bad happened in early November. They are still supreme. The columnists go on as though nothing is amiss. This week, E.J. Dionne consulted with three defeated congressmen whose advice he passed on to President Obama on how to succeed during the next two years. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues as though she is speaker for life, though she probably is the last Democrat to hold the post for a generation. Mental illness can be amusing.
OK, OK. It is only a satire. I am not really running for mayor of Chicago, but I do have something in common with someone who is running for mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. Neither I nor Rahm qualifies for residency in Chicago, though my family traces its roots in the city back to the 19th century, and I was at least born in Chicago. If Rahm bullies his way to residency, Chicago's big shoulders are not what they once were. He gave no thought to running until a few weeks back, when Mayor Richard M. Daley announced his retirement, and now Rahm has no place to live.
I like Tony Blair. The left is always lecturing us conservatives on moderation. It would do us good, they say. If only we were moderate, we might win the fall elections. Yet, we are likely to go for people like Joe Miller in Alaska and the dreaded Sharron Angle in Nevada, and we are going to get clobbered, or at least not win as thumpingly as expected.
It is that time of year when we depart for summer vacation. We head for the woods and mountains. Unless we planned to visit the Gulf, we head for the beach. Oh, what the hell. Even if we planned to visit the Gulf, let us head for the beaches. All the beaches I have seen there look pretty clean. So let us hit the beaches there, too. It is cheap! America is a vast continental country, and so we have various locales to infest during summertime vacation.
Remember in 2009 when Sam Tanenhaus wrote "The Death of Conservatism"?
He recently wrote an article in the New Republic, "The Death of Conservatism," that he liked so well he elongated it with padding and published it as a book by the same title.
