It wasn’t the one in the 1960s. Historian Faramerz Dabhoiwala argues that the real Sexual Revolution occurred in the 18th century, and we’re still working out the consequences of that one. Excerpt:

The most obvious change was a surge in pre- and extramarital sex. We can measure this, crudely but unmistakably, in the numbers of children conceived out of wedlock. During the 17th century this figure had been extremely low: in 1650 only about 1% of all births in England were illegitimate. But by 1800, almost 40% of brides came to the altar pregnant, and about a quarter of all first-born children were illegitimate. It was to be a permanent change in behaviour.

Just as striking was the collapse of public punishment, which made this new sexual freedom possible. By 1800, most forms of consensual sex between men and women had come to be treated as private, beyond the reach of the law. This extraordinary reversal of centuries of severity was partly the result of increasing social pressures. The traditional methods of moral policing had evolved in small, slow, rural communities in which conformity was easy to enforce. Things were different in towns, especially in London. At the end of the middle ages only about 40,000 people lived there, but by 1660 there were already 400,000; by 1800 there would be more than a million, and by 1850 most of the British population lived in towns. This extraordinary explosion created new kinds of social pressures and new ways of living, and placed the conventional machinery of sexual discipline under growing strain.

Urban living provided many more opportunities for sexual adventure. It also gave rise to new, professional systems of policing, which prioritised public order. Crime became distinguished from sin. And the fast circulation of news and ideas created a different, freer and more pluralist intellectual environment.

Thanks to Liam, the reader who sent that link. Fascinating story.

So, so predictable:

A 15-year-old Wisconsin boy who wrote an op-ed opposing gay adoptions was censored, threatened with suspension and called ignorant by the superintendent of the Shawano School District, according to an attorney representing the child.

Mathew Staver, the founder of the Liberty Counsel, sent a letter to Superintendent Todd Carlson demanding an apology for “Its unconstitutional and irrational censorship and humiliation” of Brandon Wegner.

Wegner, a student at Shawano High School, was asked to write an op-ed for the school newspaper about whether gays should be allowed to adopt. Wegner, who is a Christian, wrote in opposition. Another student wrote in favor of allowing gays to adopt.

Wegner used Bible passages to defend his argument, including Scripture that called homosexuality a sin.

After the op-ed was published, a gay couple whose child attend s the high school, complained.

The school immediately issued an apology – stating Wegner’s opinion was a “form of bullying and disrespect.”

The Christian kid was allegedly hauled into the superintendent’s office, and “subjected to hours of meetings” in which the the superintendent insulted him and threatened to suspend him.

Unbelievable. Granted, Wegner’s editorial is a thoroughly lame piece of rhetoric, but remember, he was asked by a teacher to take the opposing side of a controversial public issue. For this, the kid gets punished? And not only punished, but his exercise of free speech in a school paper op-ed is “bullying”?!

I hope he sues the knotted knickers off that superintendent and the school district. This is blatantly unconstitutional. Legality aside, the idea that the formal expression of an opinion that annoys a favored class is a form of violent harassment is offensive and dangerous. Note well that this kid did not get in the face of gay students, or the kid whose parents are gay, and yell at them or threaten them in any way. He expressed an opinion that hurt nothing more than these parents’ feelings.

And yes, I would say the same thing if the school had done this disgusting thing to the kid who took the pro-gay side of the argument.

UPDATE: If I had been the school newspaper advisor, I wouldn’t have allowed such a crude piece of rhetoric to be published. The responsibility here falls upon the adviser, not the kid. And even then … bullying? Really?

Sorry for the long, long backlog of comments today. I left late this morning to take my son Lucas to Baton Rouge, to Cabela’s, the sporting goods megastore. Today is his eighth birthday, and this is what he wanted to do. We took along his brother, his grandfather, and his uncle: a Man Trip. My iPhone got jammed for some reason, and I couldn’t get it fixed till I got home, so approving comments from afar wasn’t possible.

I’m not sure if it’s possible to make an eight year old boy — or at least my eight year old boy — happier than to take him to the gun section of a giant sporting goods store and let him have the run of the place to look around. Lucas ended up buying a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun and an Airsoft gun with his birthday money. He pronounced today the best day of his life. He can only make that judgment because he must have forgotten about the crap lunch we ate at Joe’s Crab Shack (“I wish we had just gone to Burger King,” he said). Avoid, avoid. All things considered, though, it was a good day. We came back to the house and had cake and ice cream with the cousins.

Kids are so different. Matthew thought the gun display was pretty interesting, from a technological point of view (versus Lucas, who loves them viscerally), but Matthew only gets wound up like Lucas did today when he goes to the Apple store. When I was a kid, it was going to any bookstore that wasn’t WaldenBooks. If Barnes & Noble had been around when I was a kid, boy, I would have wanted to do family holidays around trips to the city with the nearest one.

As far as the female child goes, if I have to hear one more thing about American Girl, I may move to Botswana.

Charles Murray is troubled by the increasing class divide in the US.  Excerpt:

People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.

When Americans used to brag about “the American way of life”—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.

This is a long post, so I’m putting most of it below the jump. Read on.

Murray then takes a tour through the various ways that elite white American culture has diverged from working-class white American culture. He does this by comparing the white elite Boston suburb of Belmont with the white working-class Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown. Here is an especially notable point of comparison:

Religiosity: Whatever your personal religious views, you need to realize that about half of American philanthropy, volunteering and associational memberships is directly church-related, and that religious Americans also account for much more nonreligious social capital than their secular neighbors. In that context, it is worrisome for the culture that the U.S. as a whole has become markedly more secular since 1960, and especially worrisome that Fishtown has become much more secular than Belmont. It runs against the prevailing narrative of secular elites versus a working class still clinging to religion, but the evidence from the General Social Survey, the most widely used database on American attitudes and values, does not leave much room for argument.

For example, suppose we define “de facto secular” as someone who either professes no religion at all or who attends a worship service no more than once a year. For the early GSS surveys conducted from 1972 to 1976, 29% of Belmont and 38% of Fishtown fell into that category. Over the next three decades, secularization did indeed grow in Belmont, from 29% in the 1970s to 40% in the GSS surveys taken from 2006 to 2010. But it grew even more in Fishtown, from 38% to 59%.

Murray says that the cultural difference between the uppers and the rest of America was not nearly as marked as recently as 1960. There were differences, obviously, but there was still recognizably a common culture. Now, the elites have clustered around what he calls “SuperZIPs” — towns and areas where the elites live in isolation:

Similarly large clusters of SuperZIPs can be found around New York City, Los Angeles, the San Francisco-San Jose corridor, Boston and a few of the nation’s other largest cities. Because running major institutions in this country usually means living near one of these cities, it works out that the nation’s power elite does in fact live in a world that is far more culturally rarefied and isolated than the world of the power elite in 1960.

And the isolation is only going to get worse. Increasingly, the people who run the country were born into that world. Unlike the typical member of the elite in 1960, they have never known anything but the new upper-class culture. We are now seeing more and more third-generation members of the elite. Not even their grandparents have been able to give them a window into life in the rest of America.

Murray says that purely economic explanations for this state of affairs are insufficient. The breakdown of social norms is a more plausible explanation. Plus, economically successful people will always marry within their own class, he says. Yet he clearly sees that there’s something troubling about a broadly democratic America turning into a Third World model, where a superrich cultural elite rules the teeming masses from behind gated communities.

So, what’s his solution? For elites to start moving to Fishtown, pretty much. That’s it. Seriously:

Changing life in the SuperZIPs requires that members of the new upper class rethink their priorities. Here are some propositions that might guide them: Life sequestered from anybody not like yourself tends to be self-limiting. Places to live in which the people around you have no problems that need cooperative solutions tend to be sterile. America outside the enclaves of the new upper class is still a wonderful place, filled with smart, interesting, entertaining people. If you’re not part of that America, you’ve stripped yourself of much of what makes being American special.

Such priorities can be expressed in any number of familiar decisions: the neighborhood where you buy your next home, the next school that you choose for your children, what you tell them about the value and virtues of physical labor and military service, whether you become an active member of a religious congregation (and what kind you choose) and whether you become involved in the life of your community at a more meaningful level than charity events.

I get what he’s saying here, but Daniel Larison has put his finger on what is so naive about this:

So Murray’s solution appears to be telling members of the “new upper class” to change quite a few of the cultural habits that he has just described as part of what distinguishes them from everyone else. If he explained why they should or would do this, I must have missed it. … Murray clearly believes that the “new upper class” ought to engage “in the rest of America” to reduce cultural inequality, and he wants it to be strictly voluntary, but he gives no clear reason why anyone should volunteer.

Exactly right. Why should Mr. and Mrs. Belmont send their kids to school at Fishtown High, which is likely to be a place where the education won’t be nearly as good as what’s on offer at Belmont Prep, and — more crucially to Murray’s main point — the mainstream culture is likely to be inimical to the values that they prize. There may be a moral case for doing this, but Murray doesn’t make it. Moreover, he doesn’t stop to think that the working-class people of Fishtown may not particularly want to adopt the moral and cultural values of the Belmontese. There is a certain sense of noblesse oblige informing Murray’s prescription. What if the people of Fishtown don’t give a rat’s ass about the cultural preferences and values of the elites who deign to live among them? Where is the guarantee that the Fishtownians will be improved by the presence of the Belmontese? The assumption is that if people have a better example set for them, particularly an example of people who prosper by living according to a certain set of bourgeois norms, then they will all want to be like the bourgeois. How do we know that’s true, especially in a popular culture that constantly and powerfully agitates against bourgeois values of self-discipline and stability? If you’re a Belmontese, you’re being asked to risk your kids losing the values that are likely to advance their economic condition, and maintain their social stability, for the sake of … what, exactly?

Understand, I’m not saying that Murray is wrong to diagnose a problem for our country in this cultural divergence. I’m simply agreeing with Larison that his solution is no solution at all. If you’re going to ask people of means to take that kind of risk, you’re going to have to appeal to something a lot more potent than telling them that life in the upper-class suburbs is sterile, and that they’re vaguely missing out if they only stay around their own kind.

This state of affairs is a lot more complicated than most people prefer to think. For one thing, it’s normal for people to want to live around those who share their values. The kind of people who bang on about the value of “diversity” are usually left-wing cultural egalitarians who also — Sailerbait! — extol the “vibrancy” of “diverse” neighborhoods. As the liberal political scientist Bob Putnam found, neighborhood diversity actually diminishes social capital. Why? Look:

But even after statistically taking them all into account, the connection remained strong: Higher diversity meant lower social capital. In his findings, Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to “distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.”

“People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle,” Putnam writes.

In documenting that hunkering down, Putnam challenged the two dominant schools of thought on ethnic and racial diversity, the “contact” theory and the “conflict” theory. Under the contact theory, more time spent with those of other backgrounds leads to greater understanding and harmony between groups. Under the conflict theory, that proximity produces tension and discord.

Putnam’s findings reject both theories. In more diverse communities, he says, there were neither great bonds formed across group lines nor heightened ethnic tensions, but a general civic malaise. And in perhaps the most surprising result of all, levels of trust were not only lower between groups in more diverse settings, but even among members of the same group.

“Diversity, at least in the short run,” he writes, “seems to bring out the turtle in all of us.”

My guess is that this has as much to do with different cultural values, which include moral values, as it does with ethnic and racial differences. As Murray points out in his essay, cultural differences among whites — that is, people who share the same race — have become far more distinct and divergent in the past 50 years, as we have become a society in which consumer and lifestyle choices have become not only more available, but more prized. Indeed, it is the libertarian instinct, in both its left-wing and right-wing versions, that has brought about the state of affairs that the libertarian Charles Murray finds so problematic. If maximizing and exercising freedom of choice is the telos of American life, as libertarianism in both its forms holds, then why should any American choose to live among people who don’t share the moral beliefs and practices he valorizes? And if an upper-middle class family did decide to leave Belmont for Fishtown, why should the blue-collar people of Fishtown choose to risk the scorn and rejection of their tribe by choosing to live by the values of the outsiders? The cultural pressure brought to bear upon black students who study hard and make good grades — Stuart Buck’s great book “Acting White” is the thing to read on this topic — as well as the persistence of poverty and dysfunction among black folks who reject bourgeois values, undermines the idea that all we need to change the behavior of increasingly dysfunctional working-class whites is for well-off white people to live among them and teach them a thing or two about how to live.

To refresh: the problem Charles Murray diagnoses is real. He offers no real solution. I can’t see that its possible within libertarian philosophy to come up with an effective solution. Murray needs to read Alasdair MacIntyre, who doesn’t have much of a solution either, but who at least understands the profundity of our cultural brokenness. This cultural Third World to which America is descending — by which I mean a society in which the ultrarich live radically segregated from the masses — seems to me to be an outworking of ideas and trends that have been at work for a very long time.

Mitt released his tax returns for the past two years today:

Mitt Romney offered a partial snapshot of his vast personal fortune late Monday, disclosing income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year — virtually all of it profits, dividends or interest from investments.

None came from wages, the primary source of income for most Americans. Instead, Romney and his wife, Ann, collected millions in capital gains from a profusion of investments, as well as stock dividends and interest payments.

The story goes on to say that the Romneys paid less than 15 percent of this income in federal tax, which is perfectly legal, given that it was capital gains income. As Romney said in last night’s debate, if Gingrich had his way and eliminated the capital gains tax, Mitt would have paid no tax at all on this income.

Look, we all knew Mitt was filthy rich. What this tax information release does, though, is put the focus on the unfairness of our tax system, and how it is tilted towards the wealthy. Let’s be clear: it is not Mitt Romney’s fault that he made all that money from returns on investments, and paid a substantially lower rate of tax than he would have had it come in the form of wages. As a point of comparison, this, from the Times:

Details about Mr. Romney’s tax payments, wealth and income will inevitably be compared with similar disclosures already made by Mr. Gingrich, as well the man Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich hope to unseat, President Obama.

Mr. Gingrich, who on Saturday won the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, released his own tax returns last week showing that he and his wife, Callista, had an adjusted gross income of $3,162,424 from their various business ventures in 2010. They paid $994,708 in federal tax, according to the return, for an effective tax rate of 31.7 percent.

Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, released their tax returns in April, showing an adjusted gross income of $1,728,096 for 2010 — much of it from sales of his books “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.” The Obamas paid $453,770 in federal taxes, for an effective tax rate of 26.3 percent.

The obvious question in all this is why investment income is taxed at a far lower rate than other forms of income — this, given that substantial investment income is far likelier to be something accruing to the very wealthy? Nothing personal against Mitt Romney, but how fair is it that the man made $42 million over two years, and paid taxes at half the rate of me and thee? More on capital gains taxes from the Washington Post:

Advocates for a low capital gains rate say it spurs more investment in the U.S. economy, benefiting all Americans. But some tax experts say the evidence for that theory is murky at best. What is clear is that the capital gains tax rate disproportionately benefits the ultra-wealthy.

Most Americans depend on wages and salaries for their income, which is subject to a graduated tax so the big earners pay higher percentages. The capital gains tax turns that idea on its head, capping the rate at 15 percent for long-term investments. As a result, anyone making more than $34,500 a year in wages and salary is taxed at a higher rate than a billionaire is taxed on untold millions in capital gains.

While it’s true that many middle-class Americans own stocks or bonds, they tend to stash them in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, where the capital gains rate does not apply. By contrast, the richest Americans reap huge benefits. Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.

“The way you get rich in this world is not by working hard,” said Marty Sullivan, an economist and a contributing editor to Tax Analysts. “It’s by owning large amounts of assets and having those things appreciate in value.”

More:

Republicans have led the way in pressing for low capital gains tax rates, but they have been able to rely on a significant bloc of Democratic allies to prevent an increase and to protect the preferential treatment of money earned through investments over money earned through labor.

President Obama and leading Democrats want to allow the tax cuts passed under Bush to expire. That would raise the capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent. But that would still be lower than the rate under President Ronald Reagan — who raised the tax in 1986.

“Capital gains . . . veers onto theology for Republicans, but it has always been a bipartisan issue,” Bloomfield said.

A poll this spring by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute showed that Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, think the wealthy should pay more taxes than the middle class and the poor.

Billionaire Warren Buffett has become one of the loudest and most frequently cited proponents of the wealthy paying more in taxes.

“The truth is, I have never had it so good in terms of taxes,” Buffett said in an interview with Charlie Rose. “I am paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life. Now that’s crazy, you know. And if you look at Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, counting payroll taxes, than their secretary or whomever around their office, on average.”

How the wealthiest Americans managed to get Congress to treat money made from investments differently from salaries or wages involved a variety of lobbyists, economists and lawmakers.

“Capital gains is economics, theology and politics wrapped together,” Bloomfield said.

In a time of crushing economic pressure on the middle and working classes, we are asked to consider voting for a man whose household took in nearly 800 times the median US income over two years, and who was taxed on that income at a far lower rate than Americans who earned their income through labor.

Is that right? Is that fair? In a time in this country’s life in which income inequality is greater than at any time since the Great Depression, the top two Republicans in this race are Romney, a fantastically rich man who benefited handsomely from this tax law, as do many people in his class, and who proposes no rise in the capital gains rate for the superrich (though he sensibly supports eliminating it for those making $200,000 or less); and Gingrich, a man who proposes reducing the capital gains rate to zero.

This is the Republican Party today. See this chart based on CBO data: everybody’s income is fairly stagnant, and has been for a long time — except for the superrich, who are rocketing into the income stratosphere. No wonder, given the times, that Romney doesn’t want to have this conversation.

Why shouldn’t conservatives have this conversation among ourselves? What, exactly, is conservative about a tax system stacked so that the ultrarich make massive profits from it, while working men and women pay a much higher rate on their income? Is the essence of conservatism protecting the privileges of the few at the expense of the many? If so, we lose. We are not egalitarians, and justice doesn’t require economic leveling. But soaking the rich isn’t what we’re talking about here; we’re talking about making them pay the same rate of tax as most ordinary people. You’re not supposed to talk about this on the Right, but why not? Why is this a question only liberals and Democrats are allowed to ask?

UPDATE:John Hood says people with my concerns and questions have it all wrong. Excerpt:

A competent presidential campaign, one that could really pose a challenge to a sitting president with a massive war chest and organization, would never settle for the media spin that Mitt Romney had a 15 percent federal tax burden over the past two years.

A competent campaign, and candidate, would explain that Romney’s real federaltax rate on his investment income was more than 40 percent (being conservative, after deductions and such), since the revenue stream was subject to both apersonal tax rate and the corporate tax rate. A competent campaign would then point out that state taxes would bring the effective income tax rate on Romney’sinvestment income to 50 percent or higher. Every time a reporter or opposing candidate tried to say Romney’s tax rate was 15 percent, a competent campaign would call them out for misleading the American people.

A competent campaign would then point out that this effective income tax rate of 50 percent is much, much higher than what the average worker pays in federal andstate taxes on wage income. Such a campaign would then say that by taxing investment so punitively and then redistributing the revenue to failed  giveway programs and government boondoggles, America is eating its seed corn and deterring investors from creating new jobs.

UPDATE.2:The conservative commentator Bob Patterson writes:

For decades, conservative economists have essentially argued that carving out loopholes for property income at the expense of workers will generate more jobs and greater prosperity.

Yet the legacy of the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43 tax cuts — reductions that embody this property income bias, while relying on payroll taxes to fund general government — suggests just the opposite.

Indeed, both conservative and liberal observers debunk the myth of this “stork theory of economics,” as John Mueller terms it. William Voegeli warns fellow conservatives that the “asymmetrical growth pattern” since the 1980s has painted Republicans into a corner, quantifying how little the supply-side revolution delivered for “average” families at the bottom three-fifths of the income distribution, with annual earnings under $80,000.

Liberal columnist Harold Meyerson’s assessment is more severe but no less accurate. Meyerson contends that libertarian tax schemes, coupled with financial deregulation and so-called free-trade agreements, have stirred up a deadly mix: a “Wall Street-Walmart economy” that has gutted America’s industrial base, off-shored millions of family-wage factory jobs, and created a Frankenstein-like finance-banking-investment complex that no longer serves industry but delivered the economic dislocations of 2008.

Rocky Agrawal thinks that Larry Page is fudging the numbers to make it look like lots of people are using Google+. I don’t know about these things, but I do know that I signed up for Google+ at some point last year, and haven’t bothered to check it in … man, I can’t even remember the last time I checked it. Granted, I’m on Facebook, and I almost never use that either. But at least I check it from time to time. Google+, not at all. You?

The Onion, as usual, is on it:

RICHMOND, IN—Self-proclaimed strict constitutionalist and freethinker Rick Crawford told reporters Monday he is supporting Ron Paul in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries because of the way the candidate looks people directly in the eye, doesn’t mince words, and tells it like it will never, ever be in a million years.

“Ron cuts right through the fat and doesn’t sugarcoat anything when he talks about policies that would be absolutely impossible to implement, like abolishing the federal income tax, eliminating Medicare, or putting the nation’s currency back on the gold standard,” Crawford said as he pounded a hand-painted “Ron Paul 2012” sign in his front lawn.

In other GOP news of the weird, we had Newt Gingrich last night calling for the Bay of Pigs, Part Deux, and Romney, despite seeking the presidency of a broke country, calling for massive reinvestment in the space program. It’s like the early 1960s all over again. Mad Men, indeed.

Well now, that’s a different Mitt now, isn’t it? Going after Gingrich hammer and tongs. All solid hits on his messy leadership of the House, and his Freddie Mac involvement.  “It was Republicans who replaced him in the House,” etc. Gingrich is on the defensive.

UPDATE:  That was a better answer from Mitt on his wealth than we’ve heard before, but boy, he’s nervous as a cat when he talks about this, isn’t he? Santorum had a great comeback, though: if you’re such a big defender of capitalism, why did you support the Wall Street bailouts? Still, that’s progress from Mitt on this issue, but that’s not exactly a convincing delivery, is it?

UPDATE.1: I’ve been telling people all day to watch this debate, because it’s going to be fiery. So far, it’s kind of a dud. Weird.

“There’s a point in this process where it gets unnecessarily personal and nasty, and that’s sad,” says Newt Gingrich. Up next: Snooki denounces a lack of decorum among saloon patrons.

UPDATE.2: Romney makes a solid attack on Gingrich for his Freddie Mac advisory contract, saying it’s ridiculous to say that he was paid for being a “historian.” Gingrich lamely says that he was in fact hired by Freddie “largely based on my knowledge of history, including the history of Washington.” Oh, please! Your knowledge of the history of your friendships with the political elite, bub.

Hard to believe, but Romney has Gingrich on the defensive on this lobbying issue, and he’s stunned.

UPDATE.3: Romney is on a roll. Not much of a roll, but he sure has taken the momentum out of Newt tonight.

UPDATE.4: Is Ron Paul here tonight? Hello? It’s not Paul’s fault; Brian Williams is running this thing. What a stiff.

UPDATE.5: Gingrich says the banks are “overregulated.” Really? Brian Williams ought to have pressed him on whether or not the banks were overregulated prior to the crash — instead, asking that of Romney. Romney, correctly, says that no, the banks were, and are, “poorly regulated.” But Williams let Gingrich get away with this.

Oh great, Gingrich wants to commit the US to overthrowing the Cuban government by using every means short of military invasion.

“The Cold War is over. … It’s not 1962 anymore, and we don’t have to use force and intimidation, and the overthrow of governments,” Paul says, sensibly — and bravely, to a Florida audience. Paul obviously doesn’t want to win Florida.

UPDATE.6: So it’s Obama’s fault that we’re making little headway in Afghanistan? Really, Mitt? This ticks me off. This idea that the only thing keeping us from defeating the Taliban is a lack of American will is by this late date a lie, and an outrage. Go Ron Paul!

I hate this format. This isn’t a debate. It’s an interview show. The only interesting part of the whole thing was when Romney and Gingrich pounded each other directly.

UPDATE.7: Could Santorum possibly be more eager to start a war with Iran? Good grief. Vote for him, and you vote for war. At least that’s crystal clear.

UPDATE.8: Gingrich believes that ag subsidies are bad, but it’s hopeless to try to get rid of them, so, meh. That’s it? That’s it?!

But then that irritating Romney says the right thing — subsidies are bad — then uses his time to complain about Obama. This is actually a great question, the ag subsidy one, but Romney did his usual two-step to avoid answering the question he was asked, and instead to get his message out. If he was bound and determined not to answer the question, he should have used his time to lay into Gingrich. Romney still doesn’t quite seem to understand that he is not in the race against Obama yet, that he has to get past Gingrich. He started out so well, pounding on Gingrich, but now he’s reverted to type. He’s just lucky Gingrich has been such a dud tonight.

UPDATE.9: Applause and hooting is not allowed tonight. Seems like the lack of crowd response has been for Gingrich the equivalent of denying oxygen to a flash fire.

UPDATE.10: Why the hell are we talking about Terri Schiavo now? What an out-of-left-field question. That ended in 2005.

UPDATE.11: Romney’s answer on what he’s done for conservatism was pretty good: raising a family and working in the private sector, because you shouldn’t think that the only way you can do anything for conservatism is in politics. This was smart because his political record on conventional conservatism is fairly thin, certainly compared to Gingrich’s lengthy political record.

Leaving aside the substance of Santorum’s attack on Romney and Gingrich on global warming and Obamacare, his response was probably the most politically effective of the night, separating himself as a conservative from those two. “They rejected conservatism when it was hard to stand,” Santorum said. Great line.

Of course, Paul says exactly the right thing: “The problem is nobody has defined what conservatism is.” I disagree with Paul that conservatism is about less government and more freedom — that’s why Paul is a libertarian, and I am a traditional conservative — but as usual, I greatly appreciate the point he’s making.

UPDATE.12: My favorite tweet of the night is from (suck-up watch!) my Big Cheese Editor Dan McCarthy:

My God, the country is in freefall and Mitt is pandering to the space program.

UPDATE.13: You could have turned this thing off after the first 25 minutes. Romney knifed him early on, and Gingrich never really recovered. But Romney failed to continue the momentum he built up against Gingrich. I think Romney won this thing, but not by much. They all looked second-rate tonight. Romney backers must have been pleased to see him finally land some effective blows on Gingrich. Andrea Mitchell is saying on NBC right now that Gingrich’s momentum will not have been slowed by this performance tonight. I don’t know. She’s on the ground in Florida, I’m not. This was not the fiery Newt that lit up South Carolina.

I can’t see any big headlines coming out of this debate tonight, unlike the South Carolina debates. Tomorrow’s news will be dominated by the release of Romney’s tax returns. I thought Romney helped himself tonight, but not nearly as much as he needed to have done.

UPDATE.14: Forgot to mention Andrea Mitchell quoting an unnamed Romney adviser saying that if Romney loses Florida, they’re going to push for a brokered convention. A Romney advisor. A brokered GOP convention. Think about that, would you. Is that even possible? Imagine the revolt from the base if the GOP insiders tried that. It’s unthinkable. Except it’s not.

UPDATE.15: I wish to revise my take on Romney’s answer to the “what have you done for conservatism?” question to agree with Jonah Goldberg, who says:

For instance, his answer on what he did for conservatism was very bad. He began with: I raised a family! I started a business! Well, there are lots of liberals who raised families and started businesses. Those are admirable things but they have nothing to do with advancing conservatism. And that’s fine! Conservatism is only a partial philosophy of life and there’s no shame whatsoever and much honor in dedicating your life to family and work. But by beginning that way it sent the signal that he didn’t have a good answer and by the time he got to his record it was already clear he wasn’t going to sell it.

 

Big news from conservative academia: political scientist Patrick Deneen is leaving Georgetown for Notre Dame. He writes at Front Porch Republic:

There are two main reasons for my decision. The first reason broadly concerns the sense of my place at Georgetown. In the seven years since I joined the faculty at Georgetown, I have found myself often at odds with the trajectory and many decisions of the university. In 2006 I founded The Tocqueville Forum as a campus organization that would offer a different perspective, one centered on the moral underpinnings of liberal learning that are a precondition for the continued existence of liberal democracy, and one that would draw upon the deep wisdom contained in the Catholic humanistic tradition. The contrast between its reception by a large number of students, on the one hand, and my colleagues has been striking, revealing, and often disappointing. In spite of its extraordinary programming and national reputation built over the past six years, it has never been embraced or supported by the university. Its events – greeted with enthusiasm and robust attendance by students – have rarely been attended by colleagues, whether faculty or administration. Indeed, its presence and achievements have never been privately nor publicly acknowledged by the university’s leadership. This would not have been a bad situation in its own right, as I did not seek nor expect the support of the University’s leadership. However, over the years, it has been increasingly evident to me that I have exceedingly few allies and friends elsewhere on the faculty to join me in this work, and dim prospects that the trajectory of faculty hiring will change. I have felt isolated from the heart of the institution where I have devoted so many of my hours and my passion. Over time, I discovered that I was lonely at Georgetown.

Notre Dame has recruited me explicitly because they regard me as someone who can be a significant contributor to its mission and identity, particularly the Catholic identity of the institution. While the administration and faculty at Notre Dame was strongly enthusiastic about the prospect of my joining their ranks, the response of the Georgetown administration toward retaining me was lukewarm. It has been a hard and disappointing conclusion to acknowledge that my work at Georgetown was more appreciated and supported by the leadership and a broader swath of faculty in the Notre Dame community than by that of Georgetown.

As a friend of Patrick’s, this news doesn’t come exactly as a shock, but it ought to be shocking to the world of Catholic higher education. Georgetown just lost one of its brightest young academic stars because it wasn’t Catholic enough. He’s going to Notre Dame because it’s a Catholic university where it’s okay to be authentically Catholic. Good for him.

The second reason for Patrick’s departure is very Front Porch Republic. Read his post there to discover what it is.