Listen in at 10pm as I interview Alexander McCobin.  Alexander is the young man from Students For Liberty who stood up at CPAC last Friday and PRAISED the American Conservative Union for including GOProud as a sponsor. Alexander spoke BEFORE Ryan Sorba’s anti-gay tirade from the same podium a few minutes later.

We’ll address the CPAC controversy but also talk about Alexander’s organization and the goals that they are working to achieve in the name of liberty & freedom.

The URL Link to GayPatriot’s America is here.  The call-in number is (646) 716-8574.

Although I’ve been more busy in recent days than I was at the end of last year, I find myself more resilient, more ready to smile and to laugh–and to brush off critical comments (and mean-spirited e-mails).  I have been waking earlier to tend to blog business and staying up late to work on my dissertation.  And I’ve still managed to find time to work out regularly and watch a DVD most evenings.

So, I’ve been wondering if this greater ebullience and resilience is related to my devoting a smaller proportion of my day to politics.  I’ve been reading and writing more about mythology.  And while some of the scholarly articles grate, with their turgid prose and p.c. arguments unrelated to the material considered, at least they do provide some insight (albeit limited) into myth.

As I relate this resilience, I recall giving a ride to another runner (well, I was a runner when I lived in DC) to the Virginia state Young Republican (YR) convention back in 1991.  As we spoke about running and our experiences in college athletics and our times in local races, he wondered that so few of our YR colleagues pursed any athletic endeavors or exhibited any passions beyond politics.

A few years later, when delivering information about the Arlington Country Republican Committee to a neighbor who had expressed interest in joining, I met another man similar to those YR colleagues.  He had all wall of books, every volume about politics.  During our entire communication, the guy never smiled, but groused that not all local Republicans were committed conservatives (or some such).  (He never joined the committee.)

So all this got me wondering, if maybe so many angry leftists are so angry because their entire life revolves around politics.

Just a thought.

Now to get back to Athena.

Yesterday, in a conversation with my youngest brother, we puzzled over the president’s decision to double down on his health care overhaul despite polls showing strong opposition to the plan.  My brother thought Obama had no choice but to press on, lest he lose his left-wing base.  If he gives in, he risks dampening their enthusiasm in this year’s congressional elections, possibly pushing them to back a more politically correct candidate in the 2012 primaries.

But, as the president attempts to hold onto his base, he risks alienating the rest of the country.

Calling “the strategy of President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders is psychologically understandable — as well as delusional,” Michael Gerson offers five reasons why his reconciliation strategy would hurt the president and his party, leading off with this one:

First, the imposition of a House-Senate health-reform hybrid would confirm the worst modern image of the Democratic Party, that of intellectual arrogance. Parties hurt themselves most when they confirm a destructive public judgment. In this case, Americans would see Democrats pushing a high-handed statism. It is amazing how both parties, when given power, seem compelled to inhabit their own caricatures.

The president’s decision to press on with health care reform reinforces the image that he–and hi party’s leadership–are out of touch.

Even liberal pundits think the president’s “audaciousness on health care could backfire,” with Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus expressing the worry that

. . . going for broke and failing will leave no time or appetite for a fallback, scaled-down plan. And the moment to do something on health care — not everything, but something significant — will have evaporated, once again.

Well, good.  We don’t need “something significant,” at least in terms of the significant reforms put forward by left-of-center politicians and pundits.  Right now, all we’ve got is a president desperate to impose such “significant reform” and his latest plan, an amorphous amalgam of bills passed by the House and Senate has, in Jennifer Rubin’s words, “no CBO score, no popular mandate, and no congressional majority.”

And still he presses on.  Well, it’s for the children his liberal base.

While I certainly would have voted against the jobs bill that the junior Senator from the Bay State supported, I did not react as harshly to his vote as did ColoradoPatriot on this blog.  I don’t expect perfection in politicians.

I do hope those conservatives who took him to task for that vote are hailing his recent statement on Obamacare.  On Monday, Sen. Scott Brown

. . . warned the Obama administration against using the “nuclear option” of ramming through Congress a revised $1 trillion health-care bill outlined yesterday by the White House. . . .

A spokesman for Brown, whose dramatic Senate victory last month halted Capitol Hill momentum for health-care reform, said Democrats better not try to use a reconciliation strategy to pass the bill with a simple Senate majority. . . .

“If the Democrats try to ram their health-care bill through Congress using reconciliation, they are sending a dangerous signal to the American people that they will stop at nothing to raise our taxes, increase premiums and slash Medicare,” said Brown spokesman Colin Reed in a statement. “Using the nuclear option damages the concept of representative leadership and represents more of the politics-as-usual that voters have repeatedly rejected.”

Can you imagine a Massachusetts Democrat delivering such a harsh attack on the Senate Democratic leadership?  Brown may have voted for one budget boondoggle, but he hasn’t ratcheted down his opposition to Obamacare, standing against Democrats’ strong-arm tactics and opposed to their statist solutions to a problem, created, in large part, by excessive government regulation.

As I hope my regular posts on repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t (DADT) have made clear, I believe now is the time to move forward on repeal.  Yet, I understand obstacles may emerge.  Right now, it appears that with pressure from the president’s base, he is beginning to budge, yet there are signs that he might not be up to the challenge.

Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds linked a post saying that the White House won’t commit to repeal of DADT.  At the same time, that prolific blogger also took note of a poll showing that 69% support letting gays serve openly in military — including 62% of Republicans.  That poll is consistent with a Gallup poll last year finding that 58% of conservatives thought gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military.

But, we’re hearing some concerns from top military brass:

The top officers of the U.S. Army and Air Force told lawmakers Tuesday that they should go slow in repealing the military’s ban on openly gay service members, parting ways with the nation’s senior uniformed officer who testified earlier that it was “the right thing to do.”

“I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for 8 1/2 years,” Army Gen. George Casey told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.”

Across Capitol Hill, Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz echoed that sentiment. He told the House Armed Services Committee it was his “strong conviction” that “this is not the time to perturb the force that is at the moment stretched by demand in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Given that some generals have concerns about the plan, we see once again the wisdom of the Administration’s go-slow approach, studying the issue to find a means to implement repeal without impacting military morale or unit cohesion. (more…)

Your Senate Majority Leader has wisdom beyond words that has no bounds.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) suggested Monday that domestic violence by men has increased due to U.S. joblessness.

Reid, speaking in the midst of a Senate debate over whether to pass a $15 billion package meant to spur job creation, appeared to argue that joblessness would lead to more domestic violence.

“I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “Why? Men don’t have jobs.”

Reid said that the effects of joblessness on domestic violence were especially pronounced among men, because, Reid said, women tend to be less abusive.

“Women don’t have jobs either, but women aren’t abusive, most of the time,” he said.

Photo courtesy of GP Reader StrayMRG:

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In his defense of gay conservatives, Doctor Zero addresses just how to promote civil discussion of gay marriage:

I think my own credentials as a defender of traditional marriage are in order. They can be reviewed in detail here and here. I do not hold these beliefs out of animosity toward gay people, or disrespect for committed homosexual relationships. I believe in the positive value of the marriage tradition, and I reserve the right to celebrate that value without denigrating those who don’t participate in it.

The gay-marriage movement is necessarily aggressive, because they seek a substantial change in society. I appreciate the strength of their conviction, and as long as they respect mine, we can have a civil discussion. The temptation to detonate conviction into anger is strong, and counter-productive. I’m no more impressed by Ryan Sorba’s act than I was by Perez Hilton’s.

Well said, very well said.  If people are serious about promoting this significant social change, that is, state recognition of same-sex marriage, then they’ll recognize that some people can oppose same-sex marriage without hating gay people.  After all, as long as cultures have recognized marriage, they’ve defined the institution as a union between individuals of different sexes.

So, respect their arguments and find a way to counter them (and explain why this social change is a good thing).  Yeah, I know I’ve said this before.  Countless times.

And he’s right to link Sorba to that other guy.  Blowhards are blowhards, no matter what their ideology.

There’s a lot more in his post I’d like to address, but I’m tired and need to wake up early to figure out a way to make a rhetorically smooth transition, in keeping with the theme and style of my dissertation, between Athena’s relationship to Persephone and her involvement in the creation of Pandora, the woman not the planet.