I don’t know that I’ve seen in ages the clash between two visions of American conservatism more acutely presented than in this passage from Steve Sailer’s short reflection on the transformation of Pasadena, Texas, from a blue-collar white and black town to one that’s 80 percent Hispanic, thanks to mass immigration. Sailer cites a press report saying how Houston is inevitably going to become a Latino city, because of the unstoppable force of demographic change. He then says, sarcastically:

In contrast, those free enterprise-hating Vermont Democrats with their Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders don’t enjoy Texas’s economic dynamism. What a bunch of idiots those Vermonters are! Of course, they still get to live in their hometowns near their relatives and old friends, but that just shows how liberal they are. True conservatives know that the essence of conservatism is shattering communities and crushing ties between people and places that have grown up over the years.

I want to thank the reader who put me on to This American Life’s “Game Changer” episode, about the Marcellus Shale and the state of Pennsylvania. It’s an amazing story — at least part of it — about money, power, and how the possibility of untold riches affects social psychology. I downloaded it for 99 cents at iTunes, but if you want, you can read the transcript here (advice: go ahead and pay for the downloand; it’s the right thing to do, and besides, it’s prepared for the ear, not the eye).

A major element of the story is the connection between Penn State University and the lucrative Marcellus Shale gas drilling business in PA. It was a Penn State scientist, Terry Engelder, who first discovered the potential of the Marcellus Shale in this state, and the university has been jealous of its own role in the whole business. There has been a lot of concern that the university’s research cannot be trusted, that it long ago crossed the line into advocacy. For example:

Tom Ridge: Literally thousands and thousands of jobs out there. I’ve seen some estimates that go as high as 200,000 jobs over the next 10 years. So obviously, there’s a lot of potential there.

[Host] Sarah Koenig: That’s former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who’s now working for the industry’s Marcellus Shale Coalition, talking to small business owners in April. And here’s Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma at a committee hearing, citing Penn State, to support the idea that there should be no federal regulation of fracking.

James Inhofe: I’d also like to submit for the record two studies from Penn State University. The studies found that Marcellus activity– I’m quoting now, this is Penn State University. “By 2020, employment would expand by 200,000 jobs. Additionally, Penn State University– I’m still quoting– also concluded that federal regulation was a serious threat to Marcellus development.”

See how that works, the manipulation of the authority of science by a university and in turn by politicians to serve a particular goal? Koenig talks about how the faucet of money opened up for Dr. Engelder, the Penn State geologist who promotes Marcellus Shale drilling — and who, Koenig takes pains to say, does not seem cynical at all about his advocacy, but rather is a true believer — but things shut down for Dan Volz, an environmental scientist at the University of Pittsburgh whose results indicated that Marcellus activity was poisoning the Monongahela River. (For some reason in this transcript, they’ve attributed Volz’s remarks to “Conrad”):

Conrad: I certainly have had conversations with researchers here who were direct with me and said, you know, you’re going to ruin our chances to get funding from the industry. You’ve got to not talk about this anymore. We’re not going to get any funding from the drillers, from Chesapeake, or Range Resources, or any of these companies.

Sarah Koenig: And these conversations were not like razzing you around the coffee maker, like people were actually coming to you seriously and saying–?

Conrad: These were department heads and these are people with power in the university. It was all administrators.

Sarah Koenig: Can you please–?

I don’t agree with Jon Huntsman about some things, but the man seems to be able to talk about issues intelligently and without pandering. Read this interview with AEI’s Jim Pethokoukis. Excerpts:

Should we do anything to alter our trading relationship with China, or better to focus first on getting our own economic house in order?

The Chinese do respect economic strength and they know we are hobbled today, we are in a hole. And until we get out of the hole and start paying down the debt and flexing some of our economic muscle once again, we’re not going to have the leverage at the negotiating table that we had in days past.

My first trip to China, I went with Ronald Reagan in the ‘80s when I worked on his staff. And I watched him with great confidence go on Chinese television and speak to the people of China, something they don’t even allow today, to show how fearful they are of western influences from charismatic western leaders. And we were riding very, very high. President Reagan was there to sign the Most Favored Nation treaty with the Chinese. And I compare and contrast that to one of my last sit-down meetings with [China’s] minister of commerce. And he turned to me at the end the meeting and he said, “Please don’t let your people in America lose their confidence because when you lose your confidence we all suffer.” And I thought, “This is a surreal moment. To have the Chinese reminding an American envoy that we need to keep up our confidence, the most confident, optimistic, can-do country the world has ever known?” It was a sad moment for me.

Fixing our economy (which has to include major banking reform and serious reforms to minimize crony capitalism) and intelligently managing our relationship with China are the two biggest issues facing our country. Seems to me like Huntsman is the GOP candidate best positioned to do that. As much as I like Ron Paul, he’s not going to be the next president. Huntsman easily could be. Did you read Michael Brendan Dougherty’s excellent TAC profile of Huntsman? He’s not Ron Paul on foreign policy, but he’s the most Paul-like of the candidates who would stand an excellent chance of beating Obama. From MBD’s piece:

But where Huntsman really contrasts with his opponents is on foreign policy. In a field where some Republicans are chastising Obama for being weak, Huntsman hits his former boss for being reckless. “I look at Libya, there is no defined goal, no defined national security interest, no exit strategy and I say, ‘Why do we want to be involved?’” he told his Dartmouth audience in late July. Ayres says that Huntsman isn’t about withdrawing from the world stage but reorienting our policy: “Why do we have so many military bases in Japan, we’re half a century after World War II? Why so many in Germany? Does it make sense for America to remain in these places?” Huntsman believes that other candidates are kidding themselves if they think defense budgets should be off the table when discussing the nation’s overspending.

Huntsman is most anxious about changing the mission in Afghanistan, America’s longest war. In a recent speech he leveled with the crowd: “It’s time to recognize the reality of what we’re up against in Afghanistan. It isn’t a nation-building exercise, it’s counter-terror [that we need],” he said, “You don’t need 100,000 boots on the ground and the expenses that it carries. You need intelligence-gathering capability, a special-forces presence, and help training the Afghan-national troops.”

He can be blunt about the limits of American power. On a recent campaign stop he said flatly, “I’m here to tell you folks, we can’t do a damn thing about Pakistan. Only Pakistan can save Pakistan.”

Huntsman told the biannual conference of College Republicans in July that one of the four keys to the 2012 election was that “Republicans had to rethink foreign entanglements.” He describes himself as a realist and says the “number one priority” of American foreign policy needs to be “rebuilding our core at home.” By that he means growing our economy long term and creating a market where America can be a major industrial power again.

“I might sound like an isolationist, but I am not,” he told me, before punching back at his hawkish critics. “They haven’t been on the other side of the negotiating table with the Chinese,” he says coolly. “They clearly haven’t felt our diminished leverage in the international marketplace because of our weak core here at home. They clearly haven’t read the history about the end of empires where you have a diminution in values, you have a society that becomes bankrupt with debt, and overreaching abroad. It’s the same three or four things that have brought an end to any empire.”

Huntsman’s delivery in giving foreign policy answers is extremely fluid. That is, until he is asked to describe how he evaluated Bush’s Iraq War when it was launched and how he views it now. The flow of words stops in an embarrassed sigh.

“Listen, I don’t want to re-litigate the Iraq War,” he says, admitting that he wishes to simply get past this question. “I visited [Iraq] three times as governor, and I’m very, very proud of all our troops in the National Guard. I was their commander in chief. And to this day, all I can say is that I’m grateful for the role that they played and the sacrifices they made, including families who lost and made the ultimate sacrifice. I’ll say no more.”

For a man running as the candidate most competent and knowledgeable about foreign policy, this is a hell of a punt. It is also a diplomatic dodge because there is no honest assessment that could be accepted by voters.

Read the whole thing. The headline describes Huntsman as the “no-drama conservative.” He can’t get arrested. Newt Gingrich, the all-drama conservative, is the favorite. ::::::Teeth-gritting sound:::::

Today was a tough day for my wife Julie. It was the last day of the homeschool co-op’s fall semester. Julie teaches grammar classes to kids there. I went to pick her and our kids up this afternoon, and found several mom’s a-weeping. One told me that I will never know how much Julie means to her kids. I told her that’s true, but then, she will never know what her kids meant to Julie. I’ve watched my wife discover a real gift for teaching grammar and writing to kids. She’s got a passion for it. Over the past year or so, I’ve watched her sit up late, preparing lessons for her kids, working long hours to make writing and grammar exciting for them, and to do her part to make our homeschool community work. Seems to me, watching from a distance, that she has surprised herself by how good she is at it, how much she loves it, and how much she’s come to care about helping young minds come alive with love of words and sentence structure. It’s hard for me to express how proud I am of her, and grateful for what she’s given to those children, and to our own.

Her class — fourth graders — made her a bound collection of farewell notes today. I was just looking through them, and I swear, they’ll bring tears to your eyes, even if you’re not married to her. One little girl wrote that she hated writing, and was scared of it, until taking Julie’s class. Mrs. Dreher helped her not to be afraid of words, the girl said, and now she thinks she might become a writer one day, and that she will never forget “the teacher that changed my view of writing forever.” Another child, a boy with a learning disability, wrote that she made him feel “protected” in the classroom, because he always believed that she was looking out for all the kids, and wanted them “to be OK.” On and on like this. It was a real Goodbye, Mrs. Chips kind of day, I think.

I didn’t know this, because I’ve never seen her teach, but apparently Julie’s signature phrase with the kids is, “Don’t freak out.” Somebody found a tote bag with that slogan on it, and gave it to her. She also got an eight-pack of Dr Pepper, and all kinds of gift cards and good things. But mostly she got a bunch of beautiful memories from some dear, dear people.

Don’t freak out. Goodbyes are supposed to be hard.

I think I must have died and gone to Ayn Rand’s Playhouse:

Eric Bolling of [Fox News Channel’s] Follow the Money set the stage on Friday when he hosted a 7-minute segment that argued that The Muppets film – featuring bad-guy oilman Tex Richman — promotes a left-wing agenda.

“We’re teaching our kids class warfare. Where are we, Communist China?” Bolling said.

You’ve got to see the whole segment to believe it:

Note how Bolling says we ought to have a “Food Stamp Muppet” because “under Obama, food stamp usage has gone up 40 percent.”

Because since the final months of the Bush administration, we have been in the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, you crackhead! Honestly, is there any stupid thing these people won’t say?

Look, I love complaining about Hollywood liberalism as much as anybody, but these Fox News hysterics are saying that the Muppet movie is an example of “brainwashing.” Really? Brainwashing? Because the villain is a greedy corporate type? Gosh, where would anyone have gotten the idea that the super-rich can be villainous? I expect Fox will now turn its vigilance toward the you-think-it’s-Christian-but-it’s-really-Maoist “Veggie Tales,” in which the evil King Nebuchadnezzar is portrayed as the tyrannical boss of a chocolate factory. (Come to think of it, Bob the Tomato is suspiciously … red.) And think of how many children’s minds will be poisoned against the banking industry this Christmas when that pinko Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” slanders the great American financial industry with its snarling caricature of Mr. Potter? You watch: if Hollywood has its way, the brainwashed American sheeple will start thinking there’s something wrong with bankers.

If we’re going to have a culture war, can’t we on the Right at least fight intelligently? Windmills are not dragons.

UPDATE: Here is a short film review by actual communists (the Maoist International Movement) of the Schwarzenegger film “True Lies.” It’s a classic in ham-fisted ideological movie-watching:

Arnold Schwarzenneger’s long streak of movies with (accidentally) progressive themes ended with True Lies. He is no longer against the establishment. No longer are cops or the government the enemy. There aren’t even strong women shooting guns and saving humanity like in T2. This xenophobic film is action-packed to the point of being absurd, and very entertaining (especially if you like your sex mixed with lots of violence). The Arabs are the enemies–crazy terrorists from whom the world has to be saved. The U.S. government and it’s detachment of “omega sector: the last defense” agents are the good guys, out to save the world. The women are floozy puppets; the female lead can’t even shoot a gun in a movie where more people are killed than left alive.

After the revolution, this movie could serve as a useful commentary on the eroticization of violence in patriarchal society. In True Lies, violence breeds romance; a mushroom cloud is the backdrop of a passionate kiss. But under patriarchy, this movie is reactionary junk that encourages misogyny and white national chauvinism. Don’t get caught in this reactionary film without a revolutionary analysis to apply. Read MIM Theory 2/3 (the one on revolutionary feminism) cover to cover before you hit the theater. MIM can not guarantee your political sanity otherwise. (Of course, this film might convince some people that all sex is rape under capitalism. If that happens, all will not be lost.)

From the most depressing list you’ll read all month, year, century:

People actually bought Billy Ray Cyrus’ album “Some Gave All…” 20 million people. More than any Bob Marley album

Worser and worser:

Ke$ha’s “Tik-Tok” sold more copies than ANY Beatles single

I think Scripture is pretty clear about what God allows to happen to civilizations who degrade themselves like this. Run for the hills!

Ramesh Ponnuru says Republican voters inclined to swoon over Gingrich had better reflect on the Nineties-era Newt to what they’re likely to get. Excerpts:

Gingrich’s fans say that he isn’t the same man he was then; he has “matured” in his 60s. Maybe so. But he’s still erratic: This year he flip-flopped three times on the top issue of the day, the House Republican plan to reform Medicare. He’s still undisciplined: He went on a vacation cruise at the start of his campaign. He still has the same old grandiosity: In recent weeks he has compared himself to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and said confidently that the nomination was his.

He still has the same need to justify his every petty move by reference to some grand theory. Plenty of politicians competing in Iowa come out for ethanol subsidies; only Gingrich would proclaim that in doing so he was standing up to city slickers in a culture war invented in his own mind. He still has a casual relationship with the truth. In recent weeks he has said that Freddie Mac (FMCC) paid him to condemn its business model, only for reporters and bloggers to find out that he had in fact shilled for the organization in return for about $1.6 million.

He still has the same penchant for sharing whatever revelation has just struck him, as with his recent musings about getting rid of child-labor laws. “He goes off the deep end and throws things out there,” says Joe McQuaid, the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, which has endorsed Gingrich. He means it as a compliment, but it doesn’t strike me as one of the top traits to seek in a president. Many voters may have the same reaction.

More:

True, Gingrich has done more to advance the cause of conservatism than Romney. But he’s also done more to damage it. He lost his job as speaker of the House because conservative representatives were fed up with his inconstancy.

To know Gingrich from working with him, as opposed to listening to him on Fox, is to dread a Gingrich presidential bid, says Byron York:

Gingrich has also taken flak from another former colleague, Rep. Peter King.  “The problem was, over a period of time, he couldn’t stay focused,” King said of Gingrich a few days ago.  “He was undisciplined. Too often, he made it about himself.”

It’s more than just former colleagues.  If one were to survey politicos, journalists and others who lived through Gingrich’s years as speaker in Washington, there would likely be a near-consensus that Gingrich will blow up his candidacy through some mixture of arrogance and indiscipline.  Those insiders simply don’t believe there is a New Newt.  Old Newt, the Gingrich who alienated many of his colleagues back in the 90s, will reassert himself soon enough, they believe.

John Podhoretz, who covered the Gingrich House speakership as a founding editor of the Weekly Standard, cautions conservatives who have short memories:

We remember the brilliant political design of the Contract with America — and how little of it actually made it into law. That would prove to be very much the pattern with Gingrich, who loves to think in grand terms but who tends toward not grandeur as a result but grandiosity, instead.

We remember how he tarnished his own “Republican revolution” even before it started between the 1994 election and the swearing-in of the new Congress by getting himself a $4.5 million book deal (that would be $6.5 million today) — a PR blunder and possible ethics violation that backfired so badly that he had to forswear his advance.

We remember the wildly wrongheaded conviction some of us shared with him that he was powerful enough to go mano a mano with Bill Clinton in 1995 — because he and we hadn’t taken account of the fact that in his races for his House seat, he’d get 100,000 votes while Clinton in 1992 got 40 million.

We remember how that conviction led to perhaps the greatest political blunder of our time — the showdown over the budget in October 1995 that led to the three-week government shutdown and the subsequent GOP cave-in that brought the “Republican revolution” to an end only nine months after it began.

I feel like someone who’s watching his sister decide that maybe she should get back together with the lout she divorced, because he says he’s changed.

Do you remember how that fiasco started? Because Newt believed Clinton had dissed him about a ride on Air Force One. This is not a stable or a worthy man. Put him up against Obama, and the incumbent will look like the Rock of Gibraltar.

It’s fun seeing the books that I’ve not laid eyes on in some time turn up as we pack all our things for the move. The other night I ran across a battered blue children’s Bible that belonged to my wife as a child, a gift of the late Pastor W.A. Criswell, of First Baptist Dallas (all the Baptist kids there got one). It retells the key stories of the Bible in language small children can relate to. I find the prose more engaging than the prose in my own childhood Bible, so I decided to start reading to Lucas and Nora from their mother’s old Bible.

We started with the story of how Saul became the first King of Israel, and last night we arrived at the death of David, and the accession to the throne of Solomon. I think my son Lucas much prefers the Old Testament stories to the New, and for a fairly obvious reason: there’s a lot more fighting and slaying and suchlike, the kind of thing that gets a seven-year-old boy worked up. The authors of this Bible version do an expert job telling stories that can be difficult for children to handle in terms that hit the sweet spot between denaturing them of their complexity, and giving little ones too much to think about. I haven’t thought about these stories in many years, but I find that I too am challenged by having to explain this stuff to my children.

Why is Saul always killing people? Why did God choose Saul, even though he was always getting angry and wanting to kill David? And David, didn’t he have a right to kill Saul, given that Saul was trying to knock him off? Why did he spare Saul? And Dad, David was so good, why did he send that man off to die in battle so he could marry his wife? And so forth.

I’m doing the best I can with this material, but I am hard-pressed to come up with satisfactory answers for all of it. None of them have asked (yet) why it was okay by God for the Israelites to engage in mass murder of their enemies, but then God turned around and changed the rules when he came to earth as Jesus. I’m struggling with the texts and these characters as I teach these stories to my children, but I find that I’m grateful for that. Those who believe that the Jewish or Christian faith comes easily, with ready-made pious stories, and plaster saints, simply do not know what they’re talking about. Didn’t God love the Amalekites too? He made them, after all. Funny how even I, who was raised Christian and who have been an observant Christian for most of my adult life, have forgotten how challenging the Bible can be, but also how rewarding.

I was trying to convey to the children the other night how frustrating it must have been to David’s brothers to see how their youngest brother was God’s anointed one. I reminded them of Joseph being treated as he was by his brothers, and how these were prefigurings of Jesus. We don’t understand God’s ways, but we know that God works through the lowly, confounding our wisdom (I told them, in ways they could understand). Lucas seemed especially confused by David’s weeping over the death of his son Absalom.

“But why? Absalom tried to kill him and take over his kingdom!”

“I know. But that’s what it’s like to be a father. If you tried to kill me –”

“Which I would never do!”

“I know. But if you tried to kill me, and you were killed, I would still be really sad, because I would love you no matter what. I couldn’t stop you from doing what you wanted to do, but it would still break my heart if you got killed.”

I could see him turning all this over in his mind, beneath his furrowed seven-year-old brow. This is good. Good for him, good for me.

I hate to smear the name of the sainted Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) from “Say Anything,” but Matt Schmitt forces me to it when he explains why conservatives see Romney’s flip-flops as evidence of bad character, but give Gingrich a pass. Excerpt:

Gingrich did more than just move the Republican party to the right, as he built power for his congressional allies beginning in the mid-1980s and culminating in his four tumultuous years as Speaker of the House; he brought to the party a “say anything” style of politics that lives on long after his heyday, and that makes it a tactically formidable opposition force. While traditional conservatism had a stern attachment to continuity and an “eat your peas” commitment to principles even when they came at a short-term political cost, Gingrich was untethered, content to propose massive social initiatives—the most famous being to give a laptop computer to every schoolchild, back when laptops cost $5,000—at the same time that he would propose to shut down large government agencies and massively chop government spending. He was able to create a broad appeal by combining his optimistic, techno-visionary liberalism with angry shrink-government conservatism. His secret: He didn’t really mean any of it. He didn’t stick with any initiative long enough to confront the conflicts and contradictions between them.

I think this is another way of saying that both of them may be phonies, but Gingrich’s theatricality makes him come off as an authentic phony, hence the Newt-love. It’s all theater, sleight-of-hand. “Say Anything Conservatism” is not grounded in any principle or policy, only the naked pursuit of power and, in Gingrich’s case, self-aggrandizement. It is one thing — and a conservative thing — to possess a mind nimble and shrewd enough to know when one should compromise one’s principles for the sake of the greater good, or for a long-term goal; it is quite another to wake up in a new world every day, and to assume that whatever has crossed one’s mind (and then one’s lips, for one suspects Gingrich has no unvoiced thoughts) corresponds to reality, or principle, or any fixed thing.

UPDATE: Gingrich is 15 points — fifteen points — ahead of second-place Romney in a new nationwide Gallup poll, 37 points to 22 points. No top GOP candidate to this point has led his second-place rival by so many points. Everyone else is in the single digits. It really does look like the Republican voters are coalescing behind Gingrich, with less than a month to go until the Iowa caucuses. Anything can happen, obviously, and with Gingrich, it probably will. Still, if he can avoid running his mouth or any devastating oppo dumps from Team Romney, this looks like Gingrich’s race to lose. If I’m Obama, I’m not believing my good luck.