One of Einstein’s more famous sayings is: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”. That single experiment would now appear to have been done so is Einstein now old hat? Far from it. Just as Einstein’s relativity subsumed Newton’s mechanics, so the next generation of physics will have to cope with the observations that came from Einstein’s work.

A failure that Einstein himself acknowledged was his failure to devise a “unified field theory”. Einsten was of course Jewish so it is interesting that another brilliant Jewish writer, Nathan Cofnas, HAS attempted a “unified field theory”. But this theory is not about physics. It is about ideology. Nathan has presented us with a theory that accounts for both religion and politics as being from the same rootstock.

And I can even tell you very simply what that theory is. Nathan points something out that seems obvious when you hear it but nobody previously seems to have thought of it. He takes Adam Smith’s famous theory of markets — the invisible hand — and points out that religious people also see an invisible hand in the world about them: The hand of God.

You don’t have to think about that for long, however, to start saying “Yes but …”. And that is why Nathan has written his book. He presents his theory in a much more subtle and careful way than my crude generalization above and proceeds to answer all the “Yes buts ..”. He fleshes out how he believes both conservative thinking and Judeo/Christian thinking arise.

But this is not a book for scholars, philosophers and ideologues only. It does something that anybody interested in modern politics needs badly: It gives an systematic answer to the old Leftist retort to all facts and arguments that they dislike: “There’s no such thing as right and wrong, anyway”. The crazy thing about that assertion of course is that the same Leftists who say that will say in almost the same breath that racism or anything done by George W Bush is wrong. They contradict their own assertion almost as soon as they make it. So it is not only conservatives but Leftists too who need to get their minds clear on what is right/wrong and where that right/wrong comes from. And Nathan helps us greatly with that.

But WHY do Leftist deny right and wrong when it suits them? Doing so makes all their OWN doctrines, policies and beliefs look like empty vapour. It’s a strange thing to do. So: The reason they do it is because most analytical philosophers say the same thing. And as John Maynard Keynes once said: “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”.

Analytical philosophers say: “If there is this objective property of “rightness”, how do we detect it and where is it? Do we lift up a stone somewhere and find it there? And that challenge has proved hard to answer. Just what IS rightness and how do we know it is right?

In recent times, however, an answer to that has begun to emerge: We know some things are right because we have rightness instincts. Rightness IS located somewhere. It is located in our long evolution as social beings. It is somewhere in our primitive “reptilian” brain. But the “Yes, buts …” come thick and fast to that proposition, as it is obvious that our higher brain (where “conscience” is located) has a role too and can make some things seem right to one person that another person sees as wrong. So how do we sort THAT mess out? Nathan goes through it systematically for us and leaves even atheists like me confident that there IS such a thing as a real right and wrong.

Nathan’s book will not be the final answer on all the questions it addresses but, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, future discussions in the field will have to take account of his arguments if they are to be well-informed.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

But, Obama is not giving up on forcing his views on American’s, reducing their freedom (via Hot Air)

(ABC News) President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

Following President Obama’s speech at the retreat, a small group of Senate Democrats, mostly women, left the retreat early in order to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to counter the Republicans’ news conference today at which they called for the mandate to be overturned.

Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.

“It is our clear understanding from the administration that the president believes as we do, and the vast majority of the American women should have access to birth control,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said pointing out that 15 percent of women use birth control for medical issues. “It’s medicine, and women deserve their medicine.”

Yet, they do have access to contraception, regardless of whether their health insurance offers it or not. They can get a prescription from a doctor and pick up birth control pills. No one is stopping them. They can go down to the local pharmacy and buy condoms! Amazing, eh? And easy! They’re even available at grocery stores and small places like 7/11, WaWa, Kangaroo, and so on. By this same argument the Democrats are making, every plan should include, say, laser eye surgery. For free. No co-pays. Yet, most don’t even include a small discount. Government is not mandating. But, 1 in 4 American’s will need some sort of corrective eye implements by age 40.

“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”

As Allahpundit wrote Anyone want to field that question from ObamaCare supporter Kirsten Gillibrand? What about the Central Government’s power to decide? But, neither is deciding whether or not to use contraception, they are deciding whether it is in the health insurance plans. Government is mandating over the specific religious objections of Catholics, a clear violation of the 1st Amendment, along with the liberals own talking points about a “separation of Church and State.”

This is not a bug, though, nor a by-product. This is intentional. When you dig into ObamaCare, you see that one of the main points is to make sure private sector employers who offer health insurance drop their coverages. Central government would much rather have the private sector pay the $2,000 fine to the Central Government, rather than pay the $6-12 thousand per year per employee they are paying now, with the employees then joining the government health insurance exchange. With each company that ends up dropping their offers, the Democrats can demonize them and says “look how mean private sector companies are!”

If just one employee obtains insurance through the exchange, their company is responsible for paying the fine for every employee. In retail, there can be, roughly, 25% of the employees being part-time. Some companies offer insurance for them, but, none take it, because it is much more expensive. Some do not even offer to part time. Companies will not take the chance that just one obtains insurance through the exchange. They will drop their plans. And that’s beside the notion that the fine is cheaper than the out-lays.

Let’s not forget this from the other day

“Unless this rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences or drop health care coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so),” according to a letter from Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

“Drop health care coverage.” That’s the point. But, why Obama would want to pick this fight in a presidential election year is strange. Perhaps he thinks that no matter how shabbily he treats Catholics, they’ll still vote for him. Democrats treat lots of voter blocks poorly, and, yes, they are dumb enough to vote Democrats. Will this time be different? Perhaps Obama was trying to change the narrative, which is that he is incompetent, has no clue how to deal with the economy, and is against creating private sector jobs. Move the conversation away from Keystone XL, Solyndra and other failed “green” companies, the waste of Stimulus, and Fast and Furious. Or, perhaps, he just doesn’t know better, and made a whopper of a mistake in green lighting this agenda.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The study has however become much celebrated in Green/Left quarters, with the ineffable Monbiot in the vanguard. Monbiot’s entry into the discussion has however energized a few ripostes from conservatives, with the most amusing point being that after Leftists telling us for decades that IQ scores are meaningless they suddenly have done an 180 degree turn and treat them as highly meaningful!

I thought I might add something to what I regard as the two best conservative responses to the original article. The first is in The Telegraph and makes a number of good points, all of which are worth reading.

I want to say more about just one of them: The point that IQ was measured during childhood (10 or 11 years of age) and that such measures are unreliable. That is however a matter of degree and of purpose. They are accurate enough to be a useful guide to who will benefit from a selective (more demanding) education, for instance.

An interesting aspect of scores at that age, however, is what I call the chimpanzee effect. In brief, this effect is that dummies mature faster so a relatively high score in childhood can lead to a relatively low score in adulthood. So it is quite possible that the high scorers in the data used by the Canadian authors became relatively low scorers later on. So if the high scorers in that body of data were later found to be liberals, it is quite possible that the same people were dummies in later life! So the data could be said to show the opposite of what the authors claim. The data could be said to suggest that it was the liberals who were the dummies.

That is all just speculation, however, The truth is that the data are incapable of telling us which way around it went at all.

That little point is really just a bit of fun, however. The second article by statistician Briggs is by far the most pointed. Briggs had a strong enough stomach to read the whole article. And when he did, he basically found that the authors had misrepresented their results. The correlations with IQ were in fact negligible. They were statistically significant but statistical significance is only a correction for small sample size and the sample sizes in the data used by the Canadians were large.

So statistical significance is irrelevant. It is other forms of significance we have to look at. Let me put it this way: What the Canadians found was (roughly) that out of 100 high IQ people, 51 would be liberals and 49 would be conservatives. Such a near-even split means of course that IQ is essentially irrelevant to ideology, or is not a socially or scientifically significant predictor of ideology.

Now we come to “racism”. The correlations between conservatism and racism were more substantial. Briggs rightly detects the flaw in that. The correlation is between WHAT THE AUTHORS SAY is conservatism and racism and there is no external validation of either measure. So all I want to do is draw attention to something I set out long ago: That even eminent Leftist psychologists have NO IDEA what conservatism is. A much noted paper in the field even identified Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro as conservatives! Can you get any madder than that? So it is no wonder that when they use their questionnaires to predict how people will vote, they find that “conservatives” AS IDENTIFIED BY THEM are just as likely to vote Democrat as Republican (for instance). How clueless can you get? What is going on of course is that Leftist psychologists swallow hook line and sinker of Leftist propaganda about conservatives. They believe that conservatives really are as Leftist propaganda describes them. It would appear that they never bother to talk to any actual conservatives to find out what they really think.

By contrast, I am a conservative so a questionnaire that I devised based on a thorough knowledge of what conservatism actually is, did what the Leftist questionnaires could not: Provided a substantial prediction of vote. See here. So once again the arrogance and ignorance of the Left has led them to a false understanding of reality and scientific work that is futile and useless. The work by the two Canadian authors certainly tells us NOTHING about the correlations with conservatism. I have written more extensively elsewhere about the relationship between conservatism and IQ.

For reference, the Canadian study is: “Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact” by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Rick Santorum could be headed for a big day in today’s contests in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. Missouri looks like a probable win for Santorum. He’s at 45% there to 32% for Mitt Romney and 19% for Paul. Minnesota provides an opportunity for a win as well. Currently he has a small advantage with 33% to 24% for Romney, 22% for Newt Gingrich, and 20% for Ron Paul. And Santorum should get a second place finish in Colorado, where Romney appears to be the likely winner. The standings there are Romney at 37%, Santorum at 27%, Gingrich at 21%, and Paul at 13%.

Santorum’s personal popularity is the main reason for his sudden reemergence as a relevant player in the GOP race. In all 3 of these states his favorability is over 70%- 74/17 in Minnesota, 72/17 in Missouri, and 71/19 in Colorado. He’s far better liked than his main opponents- Romney’s favorability is 47-60% in those states and Gingrich’s is 47-48%. While Romney and Gingrich have hammered each other in recents weeks Santorum’s been largely left alone and he’s benefiting from that now.

There are three groups Santorum’s winning in all three of these states: Tea Partiers, Evangelicals, and those describing themselves as ‘very conservative.’

He is also coming out of the shadows with more than jabs. He is coming with convincing arguments that can stick:

“Gov. Romney is dead wrong on the issue of the day and he should not be the nominee of the party,” Santorum said in a hotel ballroom across the street from the hospital, adding the issue of health care is “central to our country, central to this race specifically why Gov. Romney is absolutely incapable of making the case against Obamacare successfully.”…
“The problem is, we have a candidate who is running and seen by the media as the prohibitive favorite, who is the worst possible person in the field to put up on this most fundamental issue in this campaign, and that is Gov. Romney,” Santorum said. “The plan he put together in Massachusetts is in fact ‘ObamaCare’ on the state level.”…
Santorum said the two plans have similar levels, using terms like “gold, silver, and bronze,” and in possibly his most aggressive attack he said they both use “government panels to dictate quality and cost containment,” and for the second day in a row brought up the controversial term “death panels.”
The candidate told the crowd the vulnerable could be at risk under the administration’s plan and are at risk under Romney’s plan because the government could “ultimately decide to ration care.”

Several bloggers are now getting behind Santorum and the momentum has arrived for it to be his turn. He should watch out. So far he has been fairly safe from the Romney attack machine the liberal media because they thought he had no chance. That is all about to change soon. I’m not sure he has what it takes or if he is the best choice, but I do think we will see a game changer tonight.

Meanwhile, I think Gingrich is truly and passionately planning to stay in and hopes for a Southern sweep later on. Don’t count him out yet either. Also, Mitt Romney is definitely not a foregone conclusion as the nominee.

(Washington Post) President Obama ran — and won — in 2008 on the idea of uniting the country. But, each of his first three years in office have marked historic highs in political polarization, with Democrats largely approving of him and Republicans deeply disapproving.

For 2011, Obama’s third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in Gallup tracking polls, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That’s a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president’s third year in office — ever. (The previous high was George W. Bush in 2007, when he had a 59 percent difference in job approval ratings.)

In 2010, the partisan gap between how Obama was viewed by Democrats versus Republicans stood at 68 percent; in 2009, it was 65 percent. Both were the highest marks ever for a president’s second and first years in office, respectively.

It’s surely because you wing nuts refuse to buy into fundamentally changing America, and don’t want to see Obama succeed because he’s half-black. Why can’t you just admit that Obama knows better than you what is good for you and the country? Jerks.

Our guess is that Jones’ latter hypothesis is the right one — that we are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action.

There is something to that: the bases of both sides listen to what each candidate says and what they have done, creating that opposition. There is a battle for the soul of this country, and even some of the moderates on both sides are far apart from each other. Furthermore, each base is going to immediately state that the other party’s guy just plain sucks, and can almost never give credit where credit is due.

Where do we go from here? More of the same. But, then, that’s politics. The right doesn’t want increased Central Government spending obscene amounts of taxpayer and borrowed money, while the left wants the opposite. Of course, it doesn’t help when the Left attempts to destroy their political opponents in a personal manner, becomes extremely deranged against those political opponents, and thinks the right is about “hate”, rather than being engaged in a disagreement. Larry Elder said to Chris Matthews

“It’s called a disagreement,” Elder says. “You perceive it as hatred, just like you perceive that the Republicans want people to die on gurneys, and they don’t care about illegal aliens, and all the other silly things that you’ve said. That’s hatred. That’s hatred, Chris.”

And it doesn’t help that Obama acts more as leader of the DNC rather than president of the United States, even turning the official White House website into a partisan platform. He attacks and denigrates all who disagree with him. Interestingly, the only people Bush actually went after was his conservative base during the amnesty talks.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

There has been a lot of lament by the far left in America that the Tea Party has somehow driven the Republican Party to conservative extremes. This, however, is untrue. The truth is, the American public has been trending toward conservative views for more than a decade before the Tea Party even came about.

According to Gallup, for the last three years more Americans have self-proclaimed themselves as conservatives than have claimed the moniker of moderate.

Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

But think about this for a minute. This means that fully 75% of America is more conservative than the Democrat Party, a party that decades ago stopped being a party of centrism becoming instead a European-like, liberal party.

Gallup’s several decades of polling finds that “moderates” have been in slow decline since 1992 with Americans calling themselves “liberal” now only measuring at 21 percent. With this we see a nation that is not just center-right as many political pundits have for years claimed, but is actually trending conservative.

As to the Republican Party, it is dominated by conservatives by 71 percent, a number that has grown by nine percent since the year 2000. So it is no wonder that Republican politics has edged toward conservative ideas, its base is getting more conservative.

This all seems to bode ill for the sort of far left policies that President Obama and his comrades dearly love. In fact, one can see the progression of conservatism in America in many areas. Twenty years ago, for instance, liberals were full-throated in their criticism of the Second Amendment and aimed to ban not just handguns but all firearms. Today, with every state but one now offering some iteration of law authorizing concealed carry, anti-gun ideas are the last things Democrat politicians talk about openly. Abortion is also an issue that has trended toward the conservative point of view, though not nearly so quickly as gun issues.

Spending is also an issue that is trending toward conservative ideals. For the first time in well over 100 years the discussion in Congress is how to actually cut spending instead of merely how much to limit the growth of spending and voters are quite high on fiscal responsibility. Look at Wisconsin, for instance. 100 years ago, Wisconsin led the country in left-wing progressivism yet last year Wisconsin was among the first states in the union to vote in a Governor one of whose main promises was to scale back the undue power of government employee unions.

Certainly the country hasn’t gone far enough to the right to suit conservatives — just as the country was not far enough left in the 60s and 70s to suit liberals — but without question the United States has been drifting to the right for several decades.

So, conservatives, don’t feel self-conscious about being a conservative. After all, you are in the majority.

The Daily Caller posted an Op Ed calling on Rush Limbaugh to save the GOP by offering a clinching endorsement of one of the non-Romney candidates. The writer was full of reasons and praise for the most listened-to radio talker, but for all the importuning, Rush will never back a primary candidate. The truth is, there just isn’t anything in it for him.

The writer, Yates Walker, says that short of some action by Rush, Romney will be the GOP nominee. Romney’s big money and ubiquitous support among the ignoratti of the GOP elites will be too much for any candidate to overcome unless Rush plays the wild card, he says.

Walker fears that if Rush doesn’t speak, it will all be over.

If Rush doesn’t make a move, recent history will repeat itself. Romney’s multimillion-dollar ad buys and the mainstream media will destroy Rick Santorum before the end of January. Though he is an excellent conservative candidate and could beat Obama in 2012, Rick will be called “unelectable” by so many pundits over the next three weeks that it will become conventional wisdom. The conservative vote will split between Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Huntsman. Ron Paul will take his customary 12-20%. And Romney’s quarter of the GOP vote will be good enough to win … unless Mr. Limbaugh decides to intervene.

Walker goes on to say that Rush has been “toying” with crushing Mitt for months and that Rush must be “chomping at the bit” to do so.

“On several levels, Rush wants to,” Walker writes. He says Rush wants “to stand up for conservatives and conservatism, to punish the GOP establishment, to avoid a McCain 2008 redux and to have fun. Good reasons, all.”

With all the gushing praise of Limbaugh one has a sneaking suspicion that Walker was as much making a bid to be mentioned on Rush’s well-listened to show as making a serious proposal.

Aside from Walker’s mistake of phraseology — *it is “champing at the bit,” not “chomping” — Walker assumes of Limbaugh far too much power. Walker also makes the mistake of not seeing that there is no upside for Rush backing a primary candidate. There are, though, plenty of downsides.

First of all we should note that Limbaugh’s reputation was not built on being a kingmaker. He’s never been that at all. So, picking a primary candidate this time ’round would be out of character.

That aside there really isn’t anything a primary pick would do for the big guy. Let’s put it this way, if Limbaugh butts into the primaries and picks a candidate that can’t ultimately beat Romney, then tongues will wag that Rush has lost his influence. This would damage his reputation.

So what if Rush picks the non-Romney and he actually beats Mitt in the Primary? Then Rush will be on the hook to make sure that said candidate beats Obama. But if Obama wins, Rush instantly becomes the guy that destroyed both the GOP and the country by picking the candidate that couldn’t beat Obama.

The negatives to his career far outweigh the positives as far as Rush should be concerned. The perils to his career and his reputation are simply too great.

We do have a lower tier example of the dangers of picking a primary candidate in the person of another radio talker: Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt went out of his mind for Mitt in 2008. He backed him to the wall and lost all sense of objectivity in the doing. No Mitt misstep was too great or too small for Hewitt to vociferously deny its importance. Hewitt even wrote a book about Romney titled, “A Mormon in the White House.”

But in the final count Romney was crushed by John McCain and Hewitt became both a sellout and a schlub at the same time to many listeners. He ended up looking pretty foolish and this time around Hewitt is avoiding making any early picks. Hewitt proved that radio talkers put their reputations and careers in jeopardy if they back a candidate in the primaries.

Therefore, you’ll never see Limbaugh picking a primary candidate.

*I have since heard from Mr. Walker and he said that he isn’t the one that made it “chomping.” He told me the editors at the Daily Caller altered it to “chomping.”

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Like nearly every conservative in America today I am unimpressed by the current crop of GOP nominees for president and feel they all have major flaws — especially the two frontrunners Newt and Romney, both of whom have major deficits as far as staunch conservatives are concerned. But at this point I’ve come to realize that I don’t think I care which one of them is nominated. In fact, I think the White House is not where we should be focusing our intensity in 2012.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we shouldn’t vote for whichever GOP nominee wins the game show plaudits. We should absolutely pick one of them and then we all, conservatives and Republicans alike, should vote for him (or her).

So, what am I saying? I am saying that the White House is less important than people are saying it is. Instead, we need a two-point focus for 2012 that doesn’t include the White House. We don’t need 999 points. Just two. 1). Gaining control of Congress and 2). turning Obama out. The identity and purity of our presidential nominee is the last thing we should be worried about at this point. It is a bit late for that anyway.

Let me assure you that I don’t have a favorite in this GOP race. And I have three real dislikes: Romney, Huntsman, and Ron Paul. This article is no stealth shilling for any particular candidate. I really do have big problems with all of them. But, again, I don’t think it matters which of them we pick if we focus on the two points I note above.

First of all, any of the GOP candidates (yes even the cranky uncle of the GOP, Ron Paul) would be better than Obama. But that goes without saying because I am a conservative that votes Republican. No surprise there, really.

But there are reasons besides blind partisanship that any of the GOP nominees is better than Obama. In fact, it can really be boiled down to but one issue that makes getting rid of Obama imperative: the courts. He has been thoroughly destructive to this country with his judicial picks.

Aside from the courts, of course, Obama has been a very destructive president in many ways — another reason to be rid of him. He’s presided over the continued destruction of our business sector and our economy, we all understand. But there’s more.

Obama has already turned his power to regulate into a tool of Big Labor and United Nations-styled socialism. He’s unleashed his extremist appointees and given them the freedom to push every anti-business, anti-worker, anti-American idea they can possibly get through.

There’s more.

Obama has also created all sorts of extra-constitutional czars and “advisory” committees, the President has issued a slew of dangerous executive orders, and he’s made all sorts of horrible moves in foreign policy. But all this can be quickly negated by a new president — quickly in terms relative to how Washington works, anyway. An active new president could make headway to reverse these Obamanations almost immediately. None of these changes, as bad as they are, have the misfortune of being irrevocably permanent.

But there is great danger that another four years of Obama will create, one that cannot be easily reversed. Obama has been steadily placing radical judges on benches throughout this land. His nominees tend to be abortion activists (not just abortion supporters, but out-and-out activists), Big Labor dupes, anti-Second Amendment activists, and the like. Many are so radical that even Democrats haven’t been able to convince themselves to vote them in.

Let’s just take his latest nominee for the DC Court of Appeals for example. Caitlin Halligan, a close associate of the disgraced Eliot Spitzer in New York, is an extremist anti-Second Amendment activist. If she gets on the bench she will take every opportunity she can to damage the Constitution.

A past example is his attempt to put a radical racemongering ACLU member on the bench in California. Obama’s attempt to place Edward Chen on the bench succeeded, unfortunately.

Let us not forget that the Supreme Court of the United States is already in a delicate balance tipped only barely in favor of conservatives. It is easy to see that with the ages of the current oldest members of the court, the next presidential term will see perhaps as many as three chances to replace retiring justices.

As conservatives we must put our desire for a pure conservative president in second place to the pursuit for the next nominees for the US Supreme Court. The fact is, if Obama gets a chance to put more judges on the bench, especially on the SCOTUS, he will be able to damage this country for decades to come.

I can hear just what you are saying at this point. But Warner, you are saying, if we don’t get a pure conservative president we will still get bad judicial picks, won’t we? If we get an abortion lover like Romney (Or is he? Do you believe his miraculous conversion? I don’t) we’ll still get squishes as judges, won’t we?

I’m hearin’ ya, friends, I’m hearin’ ya.

That is why we desperately need to focus on point two: taking the entire Congress under GOP control. And not just GOP control but conservative GOP control. We have the House now, certainly, but we need to make that control stronger. But more importantly we need to take control of the Senate. Both houses of Congress need to be under GOP control and we need to put conservatives in there to do the controlling.

This is the thing, folks. We need to have the most conservative Congress that we can get. A conservative Congress, you see, will drag the squishy Romney, the unpredictable Newt, the isolationist Paul, or any of the others along behind them whether those folks want to go or not. You see, if we have a more conservative Senate, a president will understand that soft, moderate or leans-left judicial nominees will not be acceptable. A conservative Congress — if we as voters force them to toe the line and get active — will force a president to be more conservative despite his inclinations.

As far as judicial nominees go, even if we do get soft nominees that lean conservative only 70% of the time we will have justices that at least act like Americans! If Obama gets another four years he’ll continue to put people on the bench that despise this country. And these people serve for life, don’t forget, so they will be there to continue destroying this country for decades.

This is something we must work hard to prevent. It is imperative that we deny Obama and his extremist, under-the-table agenda from continuing.

It isn’t a happy predicament to be forced to settle for a less conservative president, to be sure. But that is where we are whether we like it or not. Better than we start to realize where the important matters are located and it ain’t in the presidential election as far as GOP nominees is concerned.

By David Bozeman

One of the most annoying axioms in politics is that of the smart liberal/dumb conservative. Look for the media to ramp it up in the coming months, though the notion is so absurd it would be laughable were it not for the fact that so many people buy it. Basically, liberals are not smarter, they just (to borrow an old adage) know more that isn’t true.

Roger Simon recently penned a column on the perceived intellectual shortcomings of the Republican field, quoting Chicago mayor and former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel (and I’m paraphrasing) that Sarah Palin seems a deep thinker by contrast. Columnist Kathleen Parker, who inexplicably passes for conservative in many papers, recently weighed in on the theme. While she doesn’t buy Paul Begala’s assessment of the GOP as the “stupid party” (and she opines that Begala doesn’t either), she writes that “scientific skepticism, the engine that propels intellectual inquiry, has morphed into the skepticism of science fueled by religious certitude.”

Jon Huntsman, she continues, committed blasphemy by stating that he trusts scientists on global warming. “It takes courage to swim against the tide of know-nothingness that has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual base. Call it the Palin-ization of the GOP.” Ah, a Palin reference. How original. And by the way, Huntsman may be courageous, that doesn’t make him right.

In a nutshell, the supposed anti-intellectualism of modern conservatives is merely a rebuke of liberal dogma. The left has audaciously declared global warming, to name one issue, a closed subject, despite questionable data and ongoing doubt. Risk being compared to a Holocaust denier — now that’s courageous. British writer and journalist James Delingpole recently described the latest episode of the 2009 Climategate scandal as Climategate II, which he writes “shows the scientists at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light.” He notes that the global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. Certainly, whether or not man-made global warming proves to be true, the case is far from closed.

So, could it be that the left does not embrace science so much as junk science? The Paul Begalas of the world hide their statist dreams behind the window-dressing of intellectual pedigree.

How would one of these hardcore advocates of the scientific method react if scientists discovered massive oil reserves off the coasts of Malibu or Martha’s Vineyard? Would they be considered anti-science for barring progress at the expense of their exclusive beachfront getaways?

Could one not make the case that opposing nuclear power is anti-progress and anti-science? Why are liberals, particularly feminists, so quick to shun science when differences in male and female brain structures and aptitudes are merely alluded to? In 2005, Harvard President Larry Summers suggested that males may possess an advantage in mastering science and engineering (while it is widely regarded that females enjoy a similar advantage in verbal and communication skills). After a chorus of outrage and censure by the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, the man lost his job. Now who’s the one committing blasphemy?

Intellectual bravado provides wide latitude for social and economic experimentation and daft verbal cover when things don’t go as planned. Conservatives may appear less intelligent because, in an increasingly complex world, we still defer to common sense, which is rooted in an understanding of human nature.

We are all far from perfect, thus we rely on the time-tested (but less academic) institutions of faith, family, community, limited government and the free market to keep human nature in check.

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here