When Pope Benedict XVI was announced as the new pope, I was in a restaurant in Fredericksburg running for House of Delegates — and despite all the media’s protestations, I was elated that Ratzinger had been selected.

I couldn’t talk about it then, because when running for public office, musing on the inner workings and theological perspective of the Catholic Church simply isn’t apropos in our advanced modern society.  Imagine that.

Pope Benedict XVI’s legacy was understood from the beginning: to complete the mission and pontificate of Pope John Paul II.  Benedict XVI’s corpus of writings combined with his Regensburg address in 2006 will remain the lasting legacies of his papacy.

Resigning from something such as the papacy is not something lesser men would do.  Benedict XVI is no lesser man — his humility is an amazing example in modern times where pride and vanity seem to be the rule rather than the exception.

The essay doesn’t die. It’s too protean. It only grows more indispensable as it learns to mimic, then amplify, our senses. The essay is a way of seeing through language, and in language. It grasps and sifts — recall its cognate “assay,” the distinguishing of base metals and gold. And if we like our art forms promiscuous and free, it obliges. Joan Didion turned it on to doubt in the 1970s, admitting in her collection “The White Album” that writing about her experience “has not yet helped me see what it means,” and an already supple form became even more elastic. The “lavender-scented little old lady of literature” has loosened her stays.

Well worth the read.

We need to begin building an inheritance for our kids and grandkids! ?One they can be proud of. ?The inheritance I refer to is the blessings of Liberty and Freedom. ?These blessings were purchased at a great price. ?What are you willing to personally do to ensure we bequeath the same inheritance to our children that previous generations bequeathed to us? ?Or will you sit back and allow their inheritance to be used up in your lifetime?

Read it all.

IN A HEATED discussion, the man who cannot argue always wants to bet. It is his way of withdrawing from the field of logic into the area of chance and daring. This is not necessarily a sign of fanaticism, but it suggests the first element in fanaticism — namely, flight from argument, logic, and objective standards of truth. Fanaticism is never primary either in a person or in a civilization; it is always preceded by a breakdown of reason. Any age which denies that there are objective standards of right and wrong, or which says that “one view of the universe is just as good as another,” or that “right and wrong are relative to the observer” has already given up the yardstick for measuring the cloth of truth, and is in danger of becoming fanatical.

THE DECLINE of logic and sound reason brings in its wake the second condition of fanaticism. When truth, goodness, and absolutes lose their value, it is only natural for fanaticism to center itself around certain persons who have the capacity to drag the non-thinking after them. Fanaticism never centers on an idea as such; for example, no one becomes a fanatic about the angles of a triangle being equal to two right angles, but he can become a fanatic about a mathematician who says they may equal three right angles in the stars.

At first sight, it would seem that the fanatics of communism love its dialectical philosophy as such, just as the fanatics of Nazism and Fascism loved the race philosophy and nationalistic philosophy of each system. But it must be noted that when Hitler, who was the symbol of Nazism, and Mussolini, who was the symbol of Fascism, disappeared, so did the fanatics of the two systems, except for isolated islands of insanity here and there.

Communism had its appeal under Lenin: it had its appeal later under Stalin, and presently the locum tenens of both, whoever he may be. The leader keeps the fanatics together. Any fanaticism against Jews or Christians, however abstract it may be expressed, is basically directed against the persons of Jews or persons of Christians.

THE THIRD basic attribute of fanaticism is that the soil in which it grows is the masses. There is a world of difference between the masses and the people. The Constitution of our country speaks of “We the people,” not “We the masses.” The people are persons, each with his own individuality, each guided by his own conscience and determined by some well-defined objectives. The masses are the people without consciences: they are people who become like individual nuts and bolts without reason or self-determination. All their actions are determined by equally irrational forces outside of them. The masses can never be identified: they have no faces; they just have the name “They” or “Everybody” (anonymous). They all read the same books, see the same movies, listen to the same commentators, without ever asking themselves whether these standardized means of communication should completely determine one’s own set of values. They thrive on scraps and shreds of pre-digested ideas in capsule form, find it difficult to read anything without pictures, and would not dare be out of step, even if everybody were walking to a precipice.

FANATICISM is born when all these three are put together: the loss of reason and sense of values, the rallying around a leader who satisfies emotions, and the enthronement of mediocrity in the masses.

On the lower levels, fanaticism wants to bet, instead of appealing to objective standards. On the higher levels, it wants to persecute instead of plead. The fanatics never think of ideas that have to be answered by logic: they only think of the persons who hold contrary ideas, as something to be overthrown and put out of the way. Every fanatic is the enemy of truth because he is the enemy of ideas, the foe of logic. The man who believes in truth will die for it, but he will never hate those who oppose Him. Rather, he will plead for those who hate Him, saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Bishop Fulton Sheen Writes – July 16, 1955, On Being Human, page 342-344

(h/t to Guy Stevenson)

So what the heck happened?  Four things:

1.  Hurricane Sandy.  If the election were held the week before Election Day, Romney would have won.  Sandy gave Obama the needed breathing space to snap people out of the spin room and remind themselves that they may disagree with Obama… but the economy is so bad, and things so unstable, that it’s better the devil you know…

2.  Third Party Cash.  The Dems spent it on grassroots, the Republicans spent it on air attack.  ’Nuff said.

3.  Define your opponent before they can define you.  Obama ran probably one of the nastiest, most negative campaigns in modern history.  Guess what?  Negative campaigning works.

4.  You can’t beat something with nothing.  Obama had Obamacare.  Romney had…. ?

…and that’s it.  Big Bird, Binders, and Bayonets (and Benghazi) may have been enough to seal the deal against Obama, but Romney didn’t have that exciting alternative that captured the imaginations of Americans.

This was the GOP’s Kerry ’04.

You can tell already when the New York Times is backpedaling on an eventual Romney win the weekend before the election:

If Mr. Romney wins and wants a second term, he would be wise to wed an economic narrative about innovation with a narrative that will save his party from extinction by making comprehensive immigration reform a central item on his agenda. If Mr. Romney succeeds in reviving a moderate Republicanism that recognizes that an increasingly interconnected world will require an increasingly diverse work force, he could potentially drag his party into the 21st century.

Gee — where was that talk in 2008, Mr. Westen?  Expect more cautionary tales like this from the left trying to preserve any shred of government that exists.

We are $1.3 trillion in the hole every year.  They know it’s not sustainable, but they continue to spend, spend, spend because Democrats can’t be viewed as responsible for the cuts that must come.

…which is why the heavy lifting — and the credit or blame — will rest entirely in Romney’s hands, along with Congressional Republicans.

You’ll hear cries of “guard the change” and so forth.  Conservatives would do well to remind progressives of two things: (1) elections do have consequences, and (2) such caution and pragmatism were never exhibited when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House in 2008 — a mistake that conservatives would be ill-advised to repeat, but altogether blameless to exercise should progressives obstruct real reform.

Republicans have a  sacred duty to fix the budget.  It will involve three things: closing loopholes, cutting spending, and yes — a tax increase.  Yet Democrats will have to be willing to turn their sacred cows into hamburgers for it to work.  Should they obstruct… in four years we may very well be on the road to fiscal insolvency as a nation.  The stakes are truly that high.

Greece and Zimbabwe stand as warnings.  The European Union is tottering.  America has managed to survive as the best horse in the glue factory, but for how much longer?

The progressives have run out of our money.  There is no one left to steal from.  The American Constitution was never designed to support a late 19th century social welfare state.  The sooner we realize as a polity that our government was never designed to provide what it does today, the sooner we’ll have a true solution.

…but so long as we continue to lean on “the god that failed” and ignore the very real harm the expansion of government does to working families, the loyal opposition will be blind to possibilities and consequences.  Americans may be patriotic enough to pay more in taxes to fix the budget, but they will refuse to subsidize failures and inefficiencies.

The federal budget as it stands today could use a great deal of creative destruction and devolution to states and localities — provided the left is wise enough to adhere to the old Jeffersonian dictum that a government governs best when it governs least.

Tóibín explains that he once told a class that “you have to be a terrible monster to write. I said, ‘Someone might have told you something they shouldn’t have told you, and you have to be prepared to use it because it will make a great story. You have to use it even though the person is identifiable. If you can’t do it then writing isn’t for you. You’ve no right to be here. If there is any way I can help you get into law school then I will. Your morality will be more useful in a courtroom.’”

I have never found this to be true.  A good writer can obscure just as well as describe.  Not sure that I would ever say that must break a confidence in order to get a good concept in mind.

…and admittedly, I have never read any of Toibin’s work.  Perhaps he has a secret I don’t.  Still, I’ll be content with my morality and soul while others bottom feed for immortality.

Sovietization was never simply about political institutions or social structures. Young communist cadres absorbed from their teachers the thinking of a new civilization, where anything not under the party’s control was suspicious, probably hostile. Because the party represented the majority of society — workers and peasants — building socialist democracy meant eliminating rival sources of power, real and imagined. Soviet officials in Eastern Europe were therefore perplexed when Western governments accused them of crushing democracy. In their view, only their methods could establish it.

That last part sound familiar regarding modern day leftists?  ”Only their views…”

This is definitely a book I plan on reading.

I could listen to this for hours…

UPDATE:  Congratulations!  You have just earned an extra 3:46 of civilization!