With his second place finish in Saturday’s Nevada caucus, where Paul defeated Giuliani in every county in the state, the Texas congressman has now received 106,414 votes to 60,220 for Giuliani. ~The Politico

The Politico claim that neither Paul nor Giuliani has collected any “actual delegates” appears to be inaccurate, at least for Paul.  According to CNN, Paul has received four pledged delegates from Nevada and two from Iowa.  From the same source, it appears that Giuliani has received one pledged delegate from Nevada.

Here’s a passing thought on the politics of global warming.  David Brooks, in a column that I otherwise found reasonably persuasive in its main argument, proposed a rather odd claim:

An oppositional mentality set in: if the liberals worried about global warming, it was necessary to regard it as a hoax.

The problem with this, besides treating reasonable skepticism as reflexive opposition, is that the debate on global warming, or “climate change” as it is more irenically called these days, has focused on the reality of the phenomenon mostly as an arguing tactic to undermine support for the proposed solutions.  From there the debate shifted away from the reality of climate change, which I think most informed conservatives accept to one degree or another, to the question of causes.  Obviously, if the phenomenon isn’t real, there’s no reason to do anything, and if it is real but humans are not a significant cause we are no position to prevent it by changing behaviour.  Certainly, if climate change is happening (and I think it is), it will have real effects on weather and temperature patterns, just as past changes in the climate have done, and these are things for which we should be preparing.  But talk of hoaxes misses the main point, as does much of the argument over whether the phenomenon is anthropogenic, which is that conservatives have and will continue to oppose the “solutions” to global warming whether or not they acknowledge its reality, because they do not see climate change as the cause of impending cataclysms, much less on the scale portrayed by alarmists.  Barack Obama, ever the conciliatory figure, routinely refers to “the planet in peril,” which is roughly the liberal fearmongering equivalent of Republicans who go on and on about the “existential threat” from jihadism. 

The reaction against this kind of fearmongering, which has unfortunately been one of the main ways most Americans have become familiar with the question, is a natural skepticism about and hostility to granting regulatory agencies the kind of power needed to enforce the reduction in emissions that is being demanded.  The use of emergency to promote state power is not unique to this question or to one party, and again it finds a parallel in the alarmism about the jihadi threat.  Both alarmisms stem from a loss of perspective, a conviction that a major issue on which one party believes itself to have a significant advantage is one of the most, if not the most,important issues of the age and a sense of urgency that unless citizens surrender to the government whatever it demands in the emergency the world, or civilisation, or our way of life, will be irreparably damaged if not destroyed.  The Kyoto skeptics occupy the same ground vis-a-vis their opponents that civil libertarians and antiwar folks occupy vis-a-vis the “existential threat” alarmists in that they can recognise the reality of a problem, even a serious problem, and believe that it needs to be addressed, but they refuse to adopt absolutist and fanatical stances on the question when these make no sense and when they may actually do nothing to address the problem at hand.

The more obvious move is to find a Sister Souljah–after Saturday–to stiff arm. The most promising candidate is not a person, but an idea: race-based affirmative action. [bold original] Obama has already made noises about shifting to a class-based, race-blind system of preferences. What if he made that explicit? Wouldn’t that shock hostile white voters into taking a second look at his candidacy? He’d renew his image as trans-race leader (and healer). The howls of criticism from the conventional civil-rights establishment–they’d flood the cable shows–would provide him with an army of Souljahs to hold off. If anyone noticed Hillary in the ensuing fuss, it would be to put her on the spot–she’d be the one defending mend-it-don’t-end-it civil rights orthodoxy. ~Mickey Kaus

This would certainly be a bold move, but this is a cure that is worse than the illness from the perspective of keeping Obama’s campaign afloat.  In the wake of Obama’s speech in Atlanta (in which he rails against the “profound structural and institutional barriers” to opportunity and the “insidious role that race still plays”), can you really see him taking this position?  I’m also just trying to imagine the progressive reaction to this.  Many on the left had a conniption because the man referred to Reagan in a mildly positive way.  Just think of what would happen if Obama took a position that would actually be to the right of the Bush administration on such a policy–it wouldn’t just be the civil rights leaders who would react strongly.  How better to demonstrate his alleged lack of progressivism to the left than to take what is, in effect, the Republican position on race-based preferences?  Then, from the other side, his support for a “class-based preference system” would lead to predictable attacks from the right that he is stirring up “class warfare.”

“Giuliani for all intents and purposes has virtually no chance to win,’’ said pollster Rob Schroth, noting the difficulty of overtaking two other candidates comfortably ahead. ~The Buzz (St. Petersburg Times blog)

Duncan Hunter, who actually opposes free trade and illegal immigration, has endorsed Mike Huckabee, who wants you to think that he does.  My one-time, quite ludicrous prediction that Duncan Hunter would be the Republican nominee (based once again on the implausibility of all of the alternatives) was informed partly by the idea that Hunter’s protectionist and border security credentials would help the GOP this cycle with those states that they must win.  One of the crucial flaws with this is that I assumed voters would want the experienced legislator who knew what he was talking about, rather than the artful showman who does not.  Nonetheless, the Huckabee phenomenon shows that there is some response among Republicans to the themes Hunter has articulated–they just needed someone a bit smoother and more glib to gesture towards them very generally before they would get excited. 

P.S. Hunter’s endorsement statement is here.  It clearly helps Huckabee’s reputation on border security and national security that one of the leading restrictionists and former Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee has endorsed him.  It’s an interesting split of the two also-rans: Tancredo went for Romney, which was frankly more bizarre than this, and Hunter has backed Huckabee.  As recent and cynical as Huckabee’s shift on immigration has been, the Hunter endorsement doesn’t strike me as being nearly as odd as Tancredo’s support for Romney.  The latter is just wrong on so many levels.

That’s part of the reason why you don’t have as rich a set of religious institutions and faith life in Europe. Part of that has to do with the fact that, traditionally, it was an extension of the state. ~Barack Obama

As I said last month, most European churches had been disestablished by the 1920s, and many had been disestablished long before then, and there are numerous other, far more significant factors that explain the secularisation of Europe.  These were my main points then:

Here is a list, by no means exhaustive, of some of what were significant causes of the process of secularisation in Europe: scientific advances, materialist philosophies, the uprooting and deracinating effects of industrialisation and urbanisation, the introduction of ideological politics and mass political mobilisation, the material and moral ravages of the two wars, followed by the effects of two essentially materialist worldviews that claimed to “deliver the goods” more effectively or justly than the other.  Where the experience of Europe clearly differs from our own, and one of the reasons why Europe has gone further in its secularisation, is in their experience of the wars.  I have to wonder whether Americans would have been church-going and believing in the numbers that we are today if we had experienced the full horror of these conflicts and had endured the same losses.  There is a basic problem with the thesis that “faith thrives in a free market,” which is that there are now “free markets” all across Europe where there are no established churches or, where there are technically established churches they have no real authority over all citizens of that country who are not members, and yet faith isn’t exactly thriving and has been largely going into decline in the free, western European part since the war.  There has been some religious revival since the Cold War, but it is sporadic.  If “faith thrives in a free market,” Spain should not have undergone the rapid secularisation that it has experienced since the end of the Franco regime.  Italy disestablished the Catholic Church in 1984, which must be why religions of all kinds have been flourishing in Italy.  The Republic of Ireland hasn’t ever had an established church, yet it is experiencing the same secularisation that overtook Spain before it.  It has been the last twenty years of economic and social changes that have sapped the strength of religion in Ireland.  Clearly there is something much more complicated going on that cannot be explained with easy reference to establishment/disestablishment of religion.   

What strikes me about Obama’s comments is that they are perfectly conventional and could have come from the most anti-European neoconservative.  If Obama casts this in terms of the separation of church and state rather than describing religious pluralism in terms of “market forces,” he is nonetheless coming to the same liberal consensus answer that most Americans maddeningly endorse without thinking about whether there is any truth to it.  If our civilisation were devastated in two gigantic conflagrations and much of our territory subjected to the depredations of totalitarian governments for decades on end, we might find our religious life rather less “rich” as well.

The latest TACis online.  In it Austin Bramwell has an utterly devastating review of Goldberg’s book:

Instead, lacking even the excuse of ignorance, he chose to sling the term “fascism” around as casually as the most vulgar leftist. It does not speak well of Goldberg that, by his own admission, he wrote his first book not to enlighten but to exact revenge.

People love Obama down here.  The scene a moment ago was a bit like that anecdote from Gregory the Theologian about the people in the marketplace holding forth on the Trinity, albeit concerning a much less elevated and important matter.  Out of nowhere people offer you their opinions on the presidential contest.  Down the street came a black man asking for some help to get to a shelter (tonight it is miserable out in Chicago, must be in single digits), and so we got to talking.  I explained that I lived in the neighbourhood and studied history, which prompted the man, out of the blue, to complain about Hillary Clinton’s use of MLK to attack Barack Obama.  Granted, this is Obama’s turf and he will probably carry this part of Illinois about 98 to 2, but the genuine disgust the man felt for Hillary Clinton was something to behold.  Obama may lose this contest, but I don’t think I appreciated how much the Clintons had alienated black voters until tonight.  Come November, she may find a lot of very unmotivated Democrats here and around the country.

With his departure from the race, it’s time to look back on selections from Eunomia’s Fred Thompson coverage, starting right from the beginning.  After recognising the absurdity of his candidacy, I was forced to acknowledge that Thompson had far more support than I could have ever imagined.    I then embraced that absurdity and claimed that he would win the nomination (mainly for lack of any viable alternatives), whereupon his campaign imploded with the same kind of dullness with which it began in September.  Only then, after the implosion of his campaign, did the NRLC endorse him, which pretty much everyone thought to be a mistake.  It turns out I was just a little too impatient–the lack of any rationale for his candidacy soon overtook his most earnest efforts.  Now, here we are at the end.