I am disappointed that terrible candidates can gain traction in my party. I find it irritating that many social conservative voters will waste their primary votes on silly candidates who have no chance to win a general election, and that they often don't vote based on conservatism - but rather on who can best quote scripture and position themselves as the most God fearing candidate (see Mike Huckabee in 2008). About as disappointed as I was in 1988 that Pat Robertson managed to do well enough to come in second in Iowa and even win some primary caucus/states. Yes, the same Pat Robertson who had already pulled a "Harold Camping" and predicted the end of the world would be in 1982
“I find it irritating that many social conservative voters will waste their primary votes on silly candidates who have no chance to win a general.”
Well, your views are why the Republican Party is so fractured and a battle over its “soul” is in progress. I find persons that put “winning” ahead of “principles” irritating. That kind of thinking is getting Romney the nomination. Also, that kind of disdain for morale conservatives is something Rush has attributed to the “Party Elite.”
Many of us put social conservatism first because we believe that if you get that right, everything else falls into place. Also, Sodom was prosperous, and the area around it green for cattle, that is why Lot chose it. However, it turned out to be a lousey place to live.
Personally I fear God more than men.
Saw a 1995 article by Judge Robert Bork elsewhere on FR and thought this portion so appropriate to this thread:
It is likely to become a rocket ship soon if, as George Gilder predicts, computers replace television, allowing viewers to call up digital films and files of news, art, and multimedia from around the world. He dismisses conservatives’ fears that “the boob tube will give way to what H. L. Mencken might have termed a new Boobissimus, as the liberated children rush away from the network nurse, chasing Pied Piper pederasts, snuff-film sadists, and other trolls of cyberspace.” Gilder concedes, “Under the sway of television, democratic capitalism enshrines a Gresham’s law; bad culture drives out good, and ultimately porn and prurience, violence and blasphemy prevail everywhere from the dimwitted ‘news’ shows to the lugubrious movies.” But he blames that on the nature of broadcast technology, which requires central control and reduces the audience to its lowest common denominator of tastes and responses.
But the computer will give everyone his own channel: “The creator of a program on a specialized subject-from Canaletto’s art to chaos theory, from GM car transmission repair to cowboy poetry, from Szechuan restaurant finance to C++ computer codes-will be able to reach everyone in the industrialized world who shares the interest.”
Perhaps. But there seems little reason to think there will not also be an enormous increase in obscene and violent programs. Many places already have fifty or more cable channels, including some very good educational channels, but there are still MTV’s music videos, and the porn channels are coming on line. The more private viewing becomes, the more likely that salacious and perverted tastes will be indulged. That is suggested by the explosion of pornographic film titles and profits when videocassettes enabled customers to avoid going to “adult” theaters. Another boom should occur when those customers don’t even have to ask for the cassettes in a store. The new technology, while it may bring the wonders Gilder predicts, will almost certainly make our culture more vulgar and violent.
The leader of the revolution in pornographic video, referred to admiringly by a competitor as the Ted Turner of the business, offers the usual defenses of decadence: “Adults have a right to see [pornography] if they want to. If it offends you, don’t buy it.” Modern liberalism employs the rhetoric of “rights” incessantly to delegitimize restraints on individuals by communities. It is a pernicious rhetoric because it asserts a right without giving reasons. If there is to be anything that can be called a community, the case for previously unrecognized individual freedoms must be thought through, and “rights” cannot win every time.
The second notion-”If it offends you, don’t buy it”-is both lulling and destructive. Whether you buy it or not, you will be greatly affected by those who do. The aesthetic and moral environment in which you and your family live will be coarsened and brutalized. There are economists who confuse the idea that markets should be free with the idea that everything should be on the market. The first idea rests on the efficiency of the free market in satisfying wants; the second raises the question of which wants it is moral to satisfy. The latter question brings up the topic of externalities: you are free not to make steel, but you will be affected by the air pollution of those who do make it. To complaints about pornography and violence on television, libertarians reply, “All you have to do is hit the remote control and change channels.” But, like the person who chooses not to make steel, you and your family will be affected by the people who do not change the channel. As Michael Medved puts it, “To say that if you don’t like the popular culture then turn it off, is like saying, if you don’t like the smog, stop breathing. . . . There are Amish kids in Pennsylvania who know about Madonna.” And their parents can do nothing about that.
Can there be any doubt that as pornography and violence become increasingly popular and accessible entertainment, attitudes about marriage, fidelity, divorce, obligations to children, the use of force, and permissible public behavior and language will change, and with the change of attitudes will come changes in conduct, both public and private? The contrary view must assume that people are unaffected by what they see and hear. Advertisers bet billions the other way. Advocates of liberal arts education assure us those studies improve character; it is not very likely that only uplifting culture affects attitudes and behavior. “Don’t buy it” and “Change the channel” are simply advice to accept a degenerating culture and its consequences.
Robert Bork 1995