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Wow, this is an anti-God piece of filth written by Jonah Goldberg.

This warns us, once again, how far the GOP-E has traveled from the basic values that formed America.

What America needs now is a visionary Constitutional statesman as leader. One is not likely to come from the so-called "progressives" of the Left, nor from those currently labeled as "conservatives," who see no problem with using the coercive powers of government to legalize "taking" the hard-earned wages of the citizens' labor from some in order to fulfill their own version of "doing good."

Such a Constitutional leader would vow to hold fast to the principles of liberty stated so eloquently by the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address--wherein Jefferson laid out what might be considered to be "qualifications" for the American presidency:

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
= enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

I like Huckabee. I do not think he is ready to be Pres. He is not a progressive. He has ticked a few groups off.

Don’t like Huck, but why is “anachronistic” necessarily bad? Isn’t it just admitting that values are timeless?

How about the National Gay Review’s brand of progressivism?

Jonah's channelling the argument of From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism, a book that came out a few years back and blamed Evangelicals for not being Burkean conservatives (or was it free market conservatives -- I'm not sure now). The author argued that "the evangelical temperament is inherently progressive."

If so, it's part of the facts of life. Burkean conservatives are pretty rare in America, and free market purists are nowhere near a majority. If you want to get anything done in politics you have to work with people who don't agree with you about everything. Once in a while, they may actually be right about something, maybe even more right than oneself.

But Huck is too much yesterday's guy. He won't have much of a following among people who actually follow politics. A lot of people don't follow politics though.