I wonder if Ted Bundy ever made a to-do list

I was making my to-do list this morning when I realized that if it ever fell into the wrong hands it could look very, very bad:

• Item 17: Prepare for party Saturday. Buy lots of rope, maybe a leather hood? Try to leave marks this time.
• Item 23: Figure out a way not to kill Nico.

The political wheel turnsssss, my precious, yessss it doesssss....

Ah, we pine for the days when the Intarweb didn't exist, don't we? Back when we had little choice but to sit back, helplessly, while the minimalist punditocracy of its day held forth on the meaning of this caucus or that primary, with the rest of us barely noticing. Maybe it was youth.

This morning I entertained myself by reading the fallout from the Republican sides. Michael Graham at the National Review has the best so far:

In November, we'll be sending out our most liberal, least trustworthy candidate to take on Hillary Clinton-- perhaps not more liberal than Barack Obama, but certainly far less trustworthy. And the worst part for the Right is that McCain will have won the nomination while ignoring, insulting and, as of this weekend, shamelessly lying about conservatives and conservatism.

Oh, remember Bush's comment about how the Constitution is "just a goddamn piece of paper?" McCain in an interview with Don Imus said that he could think of no way to prevent corruption in Washington without restricting what he called "quote First Amendment rights unquote." Pesky things, those rights.

Hey, if John Holbo thinks that McCain is "liberal," and McCain is in favor of restricting free speech, does that mean that conservatives finally recognize the benefit of free speech and will back off their anti-pornography efforts?

"The moral vacuity of libertarianism is poisonous to public life."

The Weekly Standard has published a very muddled and confused article entitled No Substitute for Virtue, in which Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey gnash their teeth at the way the press have been mistreating poor John McCain. I don't want to make this an anti-McCain day, and this isn't about McCain, but the premise of their argument is that McCain is the best candidate because he's the most virtuous, and says that he believes in the virtue of human beings to make good government, rather than believing in human beings to adhere to an ideology that would result in good government.

I fail to see a difference here. How is their "virtue" different from "ideology," other than it being more mealy-mouthed, more ill-defined, and therefore more subject to the arbitrary whims of the powerful, rather than subject to the rule of law and applicable to all?

What alarms me most is that this article abandons the conservative principle that we must watch the watcher, and mistrust the powerful: instead, it adheres to the very liberal view that if we put the right man, a virtuous man, into power, then we can trust him to Do The Right Thing, even if that means sometimes failing to adhere to the letter of the law. We've been down this road before: we've been on it for eight screwball years, and as a recommendation it comes poorly and late. This article is last-gasp politics at its worst.

They decry ideology as "the clean and well-lit prison of one idea," while remaining hidebound themselves to one idea: Virtue, without telling us what they mean by it. They adhere to a candidate who is willing to use the force of arms to enforce this "virture" if necessary.

Will Wilkinson characterizes their argument (he says "unfairly," but I disagree) this way:

Libertarianism is dangerous because it discourages juvenile romantic attachment to higher things — meaningful things — like Honor, Virtue, and the indescribable joy of sacrificing one's life to the service of the American Volksreich. All libertarians care about is superficial shit like not starving, living a long time, and being creative and happy. Blah blah blah. But, really, what's the point of living to 200 if all you do is enjoy yourself the whole time? I mean, don't you want to know what it is like to kill a man? DON'T YOU WANT TO TASTE BLOOD!? Besides, virtue.

You have to read his response, you just do, because he's absolutely spot on:

I am more and more coming to the conclusion that National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager's fantasies about what it means to be a grown up. The fundamental moral decency of liberal individualism seems, to the unserious mind that thinks itself serious, completely insipid next to very exciting big boy ideas about shared struggle, sacrifice, duty, glory, virtue, and (most of all) power.

That's exactly right. "Great Nation" conservatism is not conservative at all; it's about using power, and is no different than "Great People" liberalism. Both have twisted and ideological ideals to which their adherents would have us all adhere, with our consent or without it, and would use violence to get it. Storey & Storey's article tries hard to mask that, but Willkinson's characterization uncovers it and shows us the slathering, uncompassionate beast underneath.

I know, Linux wants to be popular like Windows...

I so should have grabbed a screenshot. This morning we had a bit of a network outage at the office, and Evolution, my mail client, was having a terrible time contacting the office's Exchange server.

Apparently, there is a message box that sometimes comes up on Vista with the big "X" symbol and the message "ERROR: The operation was successful." Well, you know, we Linux geeks, we never see anything like that.

Wouldn't you know it, but today the mail client gave me this popup: "ERROR: There was a problem contacting XCHNGSRVR16. The error message was: Success."

Hmph.

How do you know Rudy's talking crazy? His lips moved!

It is without surprise that, as Giuliani drops out of the race and into obscurity, he leaves behind his blessing with John McCain. As he exited the race, Giuliani said that he was giving his blessing to McCain because "He, like I do, has a clear vision about the challenges facing our nation."

If you go look at the challenge that faces our nation, it is an economic challenge. It is an intellectual challenge. China and Europe are the rising superpowers, and both of them are mature states of the age. While we play in our sandbox named Iraq, they're striding the world, making deal, cementing relationships, establishing markets, and ensuring their dominance for the next decade.

If we are unwilling as a nation to encourage our poorest to emulate the poor of those nations and work 16 hour days doing piecemeal crappy jobs, then we have to create a nation that is the hub of intellectual and scientific research. PNG uncharitably characterized this as "tricking them"; I don't think we have to trick them; I think we have to make this country the most attractive place, both in terms of personal liberty and academic acumen, to the brilliant minds of the world. Guiliani (and according to him, McCain) don't understand this. They think the real threat is bombs and stuff. Bombs and stuff kill people. A few here, a few there. In one dramatic case, three thousand people.

Xenophobia, on the other hand, kills nations.