Free Republic

This graphic shows left & right, liberal vs conservative, blue vs red, from a US perspective.

The New York Times published these excellent visual representations of yesterday’s election results, including analyses based upon before and after polling. And they are pretty stunning. Results on the 35 Senate races: The Democrats won each seat they were expected to win, as did Republicans, including Louisiana, which will have a run-off on December 6th, as both candidates were under 50%. Of the 7 toss-up races, Republicans won 6, their only loss being in New Hampshire. Fifteen states held no Senate election. Net change of +7 for the Republicans. Results on the House races:

Without intending to, I've indoctrinated my kids. Lately, I've found myself in the odd position of explaining and even justifying the conservative point of view. If you shut out the noise, you can find persuasive arguments on both sides of the divide. Here are a few that I came up with: On the social safety net The conservative view • People are responsible for themselves – and, given the chance, they're capable of supporting themselves and their families. If the government makes a practice of providing for people (with welfare, for example), they become dependent and lose their will to...

I just recently caught up with the exchange on conservatism and the culture wars between Brink Lindsey and Ramesh Ponnuru, in which Lindsey exhorts conservatives to give up any further efforts in the culture war, which he deems finished. And I also heard some of a Cato Institute talk that featured Lindsey and David Brooks, who agrees with Lindsey on this point. I agree with Peter Wood who commented on PBC that if the culture war is over, efforts to reform the university are pointless, and we obviously don't think such efforts are pointless or we wouldn't be here at...

I understand that the war itself itself is just and necessary, but it seems to me most Bible-believing Christians in Asia don't share it. My friends all tell me that Bush is wrong blah blah blah and America is imperialist etc. And these aren't apostate Christ-denying people: they are just like Jerry Falwell on moral issues (perhaps even stricter than most pastors in America) and they even read and agree with the Left Behind novels, but politically they seem to come just right out of Peter Jennings or the US PBS shows. For example, I'm quoting a Hong Kong Baptist...

This election may be the most important in living memory. I believe that it is the most important since 1864, when the voters of the North were asked to choose between the folksy Republican who had led them through three years of war and a Democratic “war hero” whose election would almost certainly lead to capitulation and defeat. There were two sides in 1864: patriots, who were willing to save the Union regardless of the cost, and traitors, who were willing to lose the war for ideological reasons. The same is true today. Let us understand the cause for which...