I have no idea about Mitt Romney, but I need to add something:

I have this firm belief about America:  There are two kinds of people in America: People who who have made it and people who are still working on it.  But this is America, anyone who wants to can get there.

There's a third kind, the kind that's content to be a janitor, but they are a very tiny minority.

So you have a business owner entrepreneur on stage.  There might be a couple of entrepreneurs in the audience, but the rest of that audience is nodding their head at that entrepreneur because they want to be him.  The message that freedom brings opportunity appeals to them.

That's why glorifying the janitor is stupid.  The entrepreneur, the self-made man, is an American phenomenon.  There are dead eyed janitors everywhere.  You can put him on stage, but unless he tells me about his plans to start his own janitorial service (and it happens, often), I don't care what he has to say. 

Nothing that glorifies that janitor is going to sellf_the_message_of freedom.

This (and considering the number if likes this got, I'm right) really deserves its own post.

That's what it comes down to.  There's a civil-war going on right now in the Republican Party.  We don't know how it'll turn out yet.  

I can still lose and be okay with it.  But it depends how my side loses.

The nightmare scenario would be someone who is specifically anti-libertarian being nominated.  Somebody like Rick Santorum.  

You're at that crossroads, but you don't need to pick a direction yet.  I'm in a similar place.  

May I make a suggestion?

Don't pick a direction yet.  I think the primary in 2016 will be very instructive about the direction of the Republican Party.

It's going to make a choice to accept or reject libertarians.  And not necessarily the result (who gets nominated) but how it goes down will be very interesting.

Isn't that like bad for the springs in the gun or something?

Well, if you mention me by name, I'd comment.

That deserves its own post.

Troy, that intro "The only law school whose tuition is indexed to the price of the McRib," 

Was the best intro you've ever done.

When all you have is a protectionist hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Ssssshhhhh!   You're not supposed to talk about that.

They're blood enemies and if one triumphs over the other, it'll be the end of the republic!

Seconded.

My favorite observation from the original post is this:

Sex scenes work onscreen when they illuminate character, not when they are trying to arouse the audience. They might not, in fact, be sexy at all.

If you include a sex scene and it doesn't illuminate the character in any way, then its just a sex scene and its only there to distract from some other failing in the work.

Well, clearly James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, disagreed.   He refused to assume those powers because he, after studying history, knew where it would lead.

So we get to the situation where James Madison let Washington DC be burned rather than assume war powers in excess of those granted to him by the Constitution.

So please don't lay that appeal-the-Founders stuff on me as a justification for dictatorship under our Constitution.  You don't get more Originalist than James Madison and you don't get a more existential threat than the British torching the White House.

And if those people, those free citizens, refuse to assist by giving their labor services or turning over their money to the state to fight a war, even if it is an existential threat, that should tell you something.

One of the theories behind the Fall of the Roman Empire is that people stopped resisting the Fall when being Roman was no better than being non-Roman.

If people don't want to fight maybe because they don't believe in the fight, and maybe they don't believe in it because they don't see what they're fighting for as worth it.  

Maybe that society is so corrupt or broken that they don't want to fight to defend it.

And in those rare cases where you're talking about the existence of a society, maybe they don't want to fight because that society isn't worth defending anymore.

But now you're conflating society with government.  Who is society?  Is it the people who want to force others to fight or is it the resisters too?

In reality, what happens, with a few notable exceptions, is that the guys in charge of the government, who command the men with guns, do whatever it takes to survives, principles be damned.  The only principle for them is survival.

That could be_noble when_you're about to be overrun by Huns who are literally at the_gates, but then it gets diluted down so the existential threat_is_claimed to be from people in caves on the other side of the_world.

Sorry, I realize that you were using "the foundations of our culture" and religion as synonyms.  My bad.

By the way, no offense, and I don't ever say this here, but that's a bull [expletive] answer on your part.  Rather than argue or discuss the cause, you've decided that its not worth bothering to discuss.  

Which is unfortunate, because that discussion will allow you to explore and find the cause and maybe a solution.  You're wrong, it's not complicated and it's not a dance.  The history doesn't match your conception of it.  And its frustrating to me that you've shut that down with your notion of "a complicated dance." 

As long as intelligent, freedom loving people believe that and repeat it, it remains a dream.