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Thanks for your original question and for your reply to my answer. I toy with the idea of writing a book on the subject because this is a discussion whose time has come. The storm will come right after the 2008 election regardless of outcome.

As you have, no doubt, noticed, I am not a fan of Ron Paul. I am acquainted with a substantial number of young people who are verrrrrry enthusiastic about him. I have urged each one to work as hard as he or she knows how for their candidate. I think that tneir respective involvements will be for each of them what my involvement for Barry Goldwater in 1964 (which I regret) was for me. I do not want them to feel unwelcome in the conservative movement in which I have participated for more than 40 years. I do want them to be able to deal with the disappointment that they are in for.

Like Frank Meyer, I want a movement that can accommodate the traditionalists as well as the libertarians but that means that some degree of realism is called for on all sides. Having practiced law for 25 years or so before retirement, I know better than to imagine the actual enforcement of the constitution as written. Of course, I also once knew better than to imagine the fall of the Iron Curtain. I do think it unfortunate that we could not get the ticket punched cancelling Roe vs. Wade because of the ease with which SCOTUS can ignore the constitutional text coupled with the ridiculously cumbersome amendment procedures. I don't think of the founders as gods but they were wise enough not to have intended such anarchy or, is it SCOTUS tyranny and oligarchy??? I just know that 35 years of 50+million total slaughtered was not what was intended. Prayer in school. Creationism. The ACLU view of banning religion from the public square on the installment plan and bankrupting thse who resist. The ACLU and other leftist lawyering desined to destroy the Second Amendment individual right to keep and bear arms. No one, particularly not the founders, died to leave the SCOTUS to dictate unreformable edicts to the public on these issues and many more.

Call me paranoid but there seems to be a major move for more than a year in which "fiscal conservatives" seek supremacy in the conservative movement with many of them seeking to jettison social issues. When this election is over, that war will be fought.

Personally, I benefit little from "fiscal conservatism." IF and only IF the fiscal conservatives are a willing part of a coalition with pro-gun people, pro-lifers, pro-family folks, pro-military folks, etc., I am willing to promote fiscal conservatism even if it is not in my own interest. The babies are far more important than my personal finances. So are Faith and guns and the military and the family and other "permanent things."

May God bless you and yours.