On Saturday I spoke with TAC all-star and Business Insider politics editor Michael Brendan Dougherty on Bloggingheads.tv. At issue: What becomes of Christians, and conservatives, in a world where same-sex marriage is the new normal? And — as we discuss at the end of the chat — what becomes of antiwar conservatives in a political landscape that leaves them a choice between Romney or Obama?
(The video editors at Bloggingheads, by the way, are superhuman. They put together a 60-minute diavlog in just a few hours on a Saturday night. Michael deserves a lot of credit, too, for putting up with my rambling.)
TheMonado 
At about the 24th minute, Mr. Dougherty says that there is a “petty tyranny (such as the vote on Amendment One in NC) that modern liberalism is supposed to destroy.” I gather that Mr. Dougherty’s “modern liberalism” is the liberalism of the American Revolution and the Enlightenment, although I’m not sure where this liberalism addressed popular votes on any specific issue. It seemed that modern liberalism was arguing for individual liberties, democratic rule, and rejecting the divine right of kings, not commenting on late 19th century populist ideas. Let me know if I’m wrong.
I would also disagree with Mr. McCarthy definition of a zero-sum game saying that politics “can’t give possibly give equal weight and equal endorsement to everyone’s values.” That’s not a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is one always gains an equal amount to another’s loss. In the case of same-sex marriage, a same-sex couple gaining the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that are afforded heterosexual couples gains much more than the business owner who may be forced to cater to that couple. I would hope that is self-evident. And even if you don’t agree with that particular situation, I’m not sure you could call the complexity, compromising, and sausage-making nature of politics as a zero-sum game.