Foxman,

You should be embarrased by the comment below. It is uninformed and silly.

On the Founders-- you should read Thomas G. West'sVindicating the Founders.Then perhaps you will not make inane statements like "white, land-owning male" etc.

What do you mean by civilization? Where has polygamy been linked to prosperity and decency? Apparently you think that  protecting white land-owning males over others is a problem (I agree), but you don't think polygamy, which requires the legal subordination of women to men, is an issue.

I wish we could find the lost works of St. Thomas Aquinas where he expresses pity for the Muslims trying to destroy Western Civilization.

You should visit the Church of Our Lady of Victories in Rome--it commemorates the defeat of the Muslims before Vienna. There are a number of captured banners etc. preserved in the sacristy. A different world. . . .

There are hundreds of thousands of unemployed American engineers with advanced degrees, and hundreds of thousands more who are underemployed or working outside their area of expertise.

As KC Rob mentions, Norm Matloff has done a lot of work on this.

Jeff Sessions is the only Senator with the courage to point out that we should consider policies that benefit Americans. What a wacky idea.

Hi Larry,

Thanks for your note. I actually would hope there is a third choice!

Rand has already disappointed me. Kristol has disappointed me for a lot longer though!

Hi Larry,

TR would disagree with the moral aims of our current welfare state, but he agreed that government needs to supervise private/economic life with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the forefront of that effort. He thought the Constitution was a "straitjacket" to be disregarded when it conflicted with the Progressive vision.

We were at peace with Libya, and Kristol thought out toppling the regime in the absence of any kind of threat to American rights was just swell. He also had no problem with the fact that Obama didn't go to Congress. That is a problem for me.

Kristol praised Obama as a born-again neo-con--Kristol likes Obama more than Rand Paul. Go figure.

Hi Larry,

I said that Kristol is fine with the administrative welfare state because that is his position. Kristol admires Teddy Roosevelt--the most radical of the early Progressives prominent in politics.

I guess we would have to argue about the nature of "real threats." Was Libya a "real threat"?

I can't figure out what Bill Kristol is conserving in his alleged conservatism. He is just fine with the administrative welfare state, and he is an enthusiastic interventionist in foreign policy.

These are both positions rejected by the Founders.

I can't say that I appreciate No Child Left Behind, Medicare expansion, the refusal to enforce laws duly passed by Congress (e.g. immigration), and wars fought without a relationship between appropriate means and the end of victory.

Every time I have to fly I am reminded how much I dislike the TSA and all its works (unfortunately its works have nothing to do with keeping us safe).

But I guess the new conservative position is Great Society Progressivism with some bows toward multi-culturalism along the way!

Hi Nathaniel,

Thanks for your note. I appreciate your charitable reading of my (overly) spirited responses!

Best Wishes,

John

Nathaniel,

I have pointed this out repeatedly on this site, but I will do so again. Bush did not win 45% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, he won 40%. The early reports of the Hispanic vote were incorrect.

I suspect Bush reaching 40% of the Hispanic vote was not because of his stance on amnesty; my suspicion is that Bush was popular because of the lending policies his administration applied that coerced banks into lending to low-income Hispanics.

These policies helped bring about the housing bubble of 2008,

Yes, you are right to note that Rubio ran against amnesty and now he is pro-amnesty. We will see what that does to his political prospects. It sure didn't help McCain. It is also useful to remember that Rick Perry's presidential campaign imploded on this issue.

I agree with you on the need for civic education for all.

I will do the work that Nathaniel will not do. It took me under 1 minute to locate this data. It seems preferable to relying on guesses on academic achievement among Mexican-Americans when arguing about immigration policy.

45% of non-Mexican Americans have a post-high school degree.

9.6% of 4th generation Mexican-Americans have a post-high school degree.

It seems to me this is relevant when arguing that anyone coming to the country will do just as well as anyone else when put through our educational process.

Your aversion to facts is showing itself again. Why don't you look at the data on how for instance Mexican immigrants and their descendants perform in the American educational system? Better to accuse your opponents of denying realities based on what you "guess" I suppose.

You should change your avatar. Leo Strauss was a man interested in genuine knowledge; he didn't care to repeat conventional wisdom as if it was obvious truth.

Thanks for showing us again how many conservatives ignore facts.

Did you notice that Tea Party candidates like Rubio won in 2010 while opposing amnesty? Did you notice that McCain did very badly among Hispanics despite promoting amnesty? Did you notice that Republicans lost Hispanic votes after the 1986 amnesty? Did you notice that all the polling data indicates Hispanics (for instance) have very little interest in amnesty in relation to how they vote?

Golly, if Democrats say you are racist you better drop your argument on whatever the issue of the day is. That is a winning strategy.

Let's not pay any attention to the fact that there has been a steady decline in the purchasing power of the dollar since 1913, the reverse of the general trend between 1789 and 1913.

Let's also ignore the fact that the greatest period of wealth creation in human history was the period between the Civil War and 1913 in America. And we didn't need a Fed to do it. We even managed to get through nasty downturns in that period without a proto-Bernanke to sort currency out.

Let's also ignore the fact that empowering private interests (e.g. the private bankers who are on the FRB) by linking there plans to the coercive power of government is a real problem for those of us who like constitutionalism.

Let's also ignore the fact that this rationale would justify any government program on the grounds that the the free choices of equal invidividuals in the market doesn't work. That is the point of Obamacare, right? What is the difference?

Sure, but keep in mind that the children of the non-citizen guest workers born in America will be citizens.

Codevilla's point is that there is no meaningful difference between Republicans like Romney and Democrats. They differ on some policy issues, but they agree that our regime needs to be ordered to redistribute resources from some to others. Romney and Obama agree that prosperity rests on the broad shoulders of the middle class--meaning the middle class should pay for crony capitalism and the welfare state.

By the way, if Romney had been elected, he could not govern effectively. Assembling a coalition of interests with no conception of a public good precludes effective governance.

The mainstream Republicans say "shut up and vote for us" to their constituents. The people who stayed home stayed home because they could see Romney did not represent them in any meaningful way.