Glenn wrote:

People's minds have to be changed - the way they think has to be different - and that, in turn, requires a much different way for how our political issues are talked about.

Exactly so. Look peeps, early in my adult life I voted mostly (but not exclusively) GOP. Last election I did a straight Dem ticket. But the corrupt thinking among the politicians, the punditocracy and the Beltway goes way, way beyond either party.

I've never voted for a 3rd party candidate, and almost certainly never will. Yes, I'm a lower-case "l" libertarian, but the LP is too extreme and unrealistic, and won't bring about the things I most care about domestically, such as rehabilitating the 4th Amendment and repealing the civil asset forfeiture laws our drug policy has wrought. The LP is too full of nuts and some aspects of its platform are, to put it charitably, not serious.

We are stuck with two major parties. At this point the GOP is infinitely worse, in the aggregate, than the alternative. So, I opt to pressure the Democrats to defend our Republic and Constitution. If some genius can provide me a map to a truly viable 3rd party alternative, I'll look at it, but for now I think that is daydreaming nonsense.

If the Democrats get a clue that they can keep the 40% or so of we libertarians and the Independents galloping away from the GOP by standing up strongly against the Republican debacle, they will win many more elections. But as politicians, they have to be urged to believe this will keep them in power, and challenged to do the right things. Glenn sends that message; in my own small way so do I. I don't take to the streets because it isn't my thing (but it could become so).

Changing the parameters of the political discourse in this nation is critical. That's what I see Glenn doing. It is a crucial piece of work.

You guys are cracking me up -- but now that the idea has been planted, I'm gonna have to conduct the same experiment. I have visions of Glenn's extraordinarily cerebral commentariat all sitting on the john with undies and pants around their ankles, bent over with a tape measure. Too funny.

You are focusing on one of the four gospels (Mark); they don't all put the prohibition on divorce that emphatically.

"And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery," (Matt. 19:9).

Roman Catholics have virtually always followed your passage from Mark, but these days even get "Catholic divorces" via the intellectually preposterous "annulment system," in which it is determined that no marriage ever actually occurred for whatever reasons. (I could obtain such an annulment if I cared to do so, since my ex is gay. Never mind that we consummated the thing unto having three kids.)

There is no doubt that the NT hates divorce. But the absolute prohibition (which did not apply to merely divorce, but rather, to remarriage after it) has generally been a Catholic thing.

Even so, McCain, like so many others, left his first wife because HE was having an affair. Regardless of any exceptions, his subsequent marriage is un-Christian. And untraditional.

Right,in his case. *He* was committing the immorality (adultery) that would allow *her* to divorce him with a clean conscience, per some of the NT. His actions were, as you say, violative of Xianity's traditional views on marriage, no matter what Gospel one turns to.

Most strict protestants/evangelicals I've known also feel divorce is OK in cases of abuse, fwiw.

Yes, and as you note the translation of the word rendered as "immorality" is subject to debate. But in modern times, Protestants have permitted divorce and remarriage for extreme drunkenness, physical abuse, as well as adultery. Catholics, not so much. They still have to procure (for some money to the Church) a dopey "annulment" to decree the marriage was invalid ab initio.

I could do that, and make "bastards" of my kids! If not the minor matter of not given a rat's patootey what the Catholic Church thinks about my sex life or marital status.

Sowell, Antonin Scalia, David Brooks, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, John Podhoretz, Ahmed Chalabi, David Broder, Robert Bork, and Milton Friedman all came out of U of C.

Milton Friedman does not belong in any sentence listing odious authoritarians and/or neocons. Also coming from U of

C are F.A. Hayek, Richard Epstein and Geoffrey Stone. No authoritarians there, either.

A poster asked why so many neocon authoritians came out of the U. of Chicago. The answer is Professor Leo Straus, father of the neo-con movement, who taught at U. of Chicago. Leo was a disciple of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was a proponent of psychological egotism. The belief that you should only act in your own self-interests. Ayn Rand published a book titled "The Virtues of Selfishness". The title alone should tell you all you need to know about her.

Yes, Strauss is properly considered the Great Teacher of contemporary neoconservatism. But the rest of that is just wrong. Strauss was not an Objectivist or Randroid, and she would have found his views appalling and positively immoral. Rand (of whom I'm no particular fan) believed all lying was wrong, and that truth would set mankind free. She despised religion, whereas Strauss considered it a Noble Lie the masses needed. I rely on wiki only when I independently know it to be essentially accurate. This entry is. Note the absence of Rand in all the myriad influences on Leo Strauss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss