And now we know the rest of the story.
This is not to say that John McCain was instantly sanctified in all respects, far from it. He still had to swim his way out of a giant mental, moral and spiritual hangover from his ordeal. His screwing around would cost him his marriage before he could swim to shore. Even today, the old self bursts out in temper. But when one lays this template over the rest of John McCain’s career, one should have little difficulty accepting the story as being essentially true (I for one believe it) and to accept it as a convincing explanation of his career and his conception of his role as president.
Before considering the implications of all of this for conservatives, it is instructive to consider what it means to liberals.
In a word: "nothing." Liberals do not see it because they cannot see it. They simply do not get it. The whole idea of gaining empowerment through surrendering is as psychologically repugnant to liberals as is the idea of accepting a higher authority in their lives. Consider the Democrat party to be a gigantic creaking contrivance to legitimatize liberals in their insatiable quest to feed their egos. The job of this machine is to provide rationalizations. The obvious examples are sex without consequences and abortion without guilt. These examples demonstrate that the rationalization machine can be quite deadly as it kills 3 to 4 million babies a year. The pernicious doctrines emanating from The Frankfurt School such as moral relativism, feminism, and critical theory find application not just in cultural issues like abortion which kill babies but across the board, touching all government policy and every aspect of our lives.
To repeat, the whole subconscious purpose of this Democrat apparatus is to turn thinking on its head and provide a language to liberals so they can continue to play God (especially with other people's lives). Liberals will never about-face and cast away everything that feeds their ego addictions. That is why we hear them using English words but it comes out as a different language.
John McCain was released from his invisible bondage in that cell in the Hanoi Hilton but what did he replace it with?
Evidently, George Bush assumed traditional Christian values and standards which presumably have guided him since then. I'd venture that, on the positive side, Bush's Christian faith lent him the courageto persevere in Iraq. On the negative side, it made him too serene and indifferent to criticism so that he never fought the public relations battle necessary to see his policies through.
What evidence is there that John McCain became a traditional Christian? Or even that he came to believe in God? He has invoked the name of the deity, even in this speech but does that mean an amorphous deism or a recognizable and traditional Christian doctrine? Does it matter?
I have long posted on these threads that George Bush's Christian commitment and precedence over his orthodox conservatism. I argued that if the two precepts clashed on a particular issue, his Christian belief system would prevail. I always thought that this meant that George Bush put Christianity above party whereas most of us might not have seen a conflict on a given issue. Hence we had fetes to the Kennedy’s, African aids relief, and “compassionate” conservatism.
Obviously John McCain has not accepted Reagan conservatism as an orthodoxy to which he has consistent resort. If he was a maverick in the sense that he was the delinquent before his epiphany, he is still a maverick in the sense that he is notoriously (or "famously" if one is a Democrat) independent on matters of principle. What are those principles?
The great danger to conservatism, indeed a great danger to the Republic, is that McCain has no fixed identifiable set of principles but operates ad hoc.
[to be continued... ] 