[kellynla]

"Christianity is too deeply committed to a philosophy of self-abnegation, a destructive morality that urges men to renounce any interest in worldly goods and to turn the other check in the face of aggression. The early Christian saints, for example, abandoned all material comforts and lived in caves--which is to say that their closest contemporary disciples are the radical environmentalists. As for foreign policy, St. Augustine spent a fair bit of his massive apologia for Christianity, The City of God, explaining to the Romans that being sacked by barbarians was good for them because it taught them the virtue of humility and cured them of their attachment to material wealth."

Comment?

[freeforall]

A point well made and on target.

[rmlew]

Tracinski is plagerising his older work http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/gop_fusionism_comes_unfused.html

That aside, Tracinski is correct about the difficulties of fusionism. His failures are threefold
1) He fails to understand that Traditionalists and Evangelicals are not the same thing. Tracinski should look up the "New Right" of the 1970s.
2. He ignores anti-communism as the glue of fusionism. The truth is that Traditionalist Conservatives have already split into paleocons, those who opt out of corrupted politics, and those who seek to reshape the fusionist compromise.
3. Tracinski is under the delusion, fostered by hte left and the media, that it is only religious conservatives who have broken the faith. The truth is taht there is no "free market" per se and that American corporations are not conservative. They seek money above all and far too many have been taken over by the 1960s kids, the anti-wasp sentiments of other groups, and the global zitgeist of Transnational corporatism. American companies moving to communist China are neither American nor Conservative. Biomed companies playing Mengelian games with fetuses aren't conservative. Fortune 500 companies instituting Multi-culturalism and funding the left aren't conservative.