Since I check Memeorandum before Google Reader most mornings, I saw Hilzoy’s post “Bare-Faced Go-Away Bird” there first.  I glanced at it before going on to other posts but resolved to write something snarky about how it was quite likely that it was the first time the phrase “I’m going to Rwanda this weekend, on vacation” had ever been written.

It seems, however, that she buried her lede and that the real news of the post is that she is retiring from blogging Friday.  She’s been at it nearly as long as I have, joining Obsidian Wings in 2004.  You can read her lengthy explanation for yourself but the short version is that she was motivated to start because of what she thought was the insanity of the Bush era and that Obama’s taking over the White House means she can devote her time to other things.

Years ago, George Will told a story about his first coming to National Review and asking Bill Buckley how he managed to continue putting out commentary three times a week year after year.  Buckley replied to the effect that he never failed to be irritated by something at least three times a week.  While I go through periods where I’m less productive than others (indeed, I’m in one now) I’m seldom at a loss for something to write about.

While there’s a decent chance Hilzoy will pull a Brett Favre — bloggers who are good at it for any length of time find it hard to stay away — she’s got other outlets for her writing in her other life as a scholar.  She’s been one of a handful of bloggers from the Loyal Opposition that I’ve read regularly because she thinks and writes well and mostly lives up to this:

And that was what I really wanted to do: to listen to people I disagreed with, to engage with them, and to try to show that it was possible to care deeply about politics without hating your opponents. Being civil doesn’t mean you’re lukewarm, and being committed to your principles doesn’t mean you have to be hateful.

That’s not the way to maximize pageviews, alas, but it is the proper attitude if your goal is to persuade and engage rather than vent.

It’s been occasionally remarked in recent years that George McGovern, who lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon in a landslide because he was so ultra-liberal, became more conservative after leaving public life and starting his own business. A column in today’s WSJ, “Freedom Means Responsibility,” will certainly add another log to that fire.

His thesis is that, “Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.” He laments that attempts to fix very real problems associated with subprime mortgages, the inability to afford health insurance, and payday loans could well make things worse for a lot of people in order to make things better for a relative few.

Since leaving office I’ve written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.

Now, here’s my question: Has McGovern become that much more conservative? Or have the goalposts of our political discourse simply moved that much.

It’s an honest question rather than a rhetorical one. I vaguely recall going to the polling place in Houston with my parents in 1972 but, being as I was a couple weeks shy of my seventh birthday, I was less attuned to matters of public policy then than now.

From what I’ve gathered since, though, McGovern was a genuine hero during WWII and continued to serve his country admirably for decades. Meanwhile, even aside from his personal shortcomings, Richard Nixon would be a disappointment to most modern conservatives. He imposed wage and price controls, advanced affirmative action and environmental regulation, and appointed Harry Blackmun to the Supreme Court.

At the same time, “conservative” is often a reactionary ideology famously, as the late William F. Buckley put it, “standing astride history yelling Stop!” Modern-day conservatives (and, indeed, modern-day liberals) are much further to the left now than in 1972 on social issues ranging from gay rights to the role of women to what’s appropriate to air on television.

McGovern’s view on Iraq is remarkably similar to his views on Vietnam, so that much hasn’t changed. But he’s more conservative on economic issues and governmental regulation than quite a few modern-day Republicans.

So, which has changed more: George McGovern or the definition of “conservative”?

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Andrew Sullivan appreciated the late William F. Buckley, Jr.’s civil tone on matters of homosexuality, especially as contrasted with other conservatives of his era, but laments that “Buckley never challenged what he believed was a necessary moral and social injunction against gay love, marriage and sex.”

GayPatriot’s B. Daniel Blatt is more charitable, noting that, “When I was friendly with Marvin Liebman in the mid-1990s, he remembered his friend fondly, noting how their friendship did not change when Liebman came out as gay to Buckley.” But, as Sully observes, “Liebman was indeed a brother in combat, one of the great gay foes of totalitarianism, up there with Whittaker Chambers and Alan Turing. But he was always reminded that his gayness would bar him from full inclusion as an equal in the conservative movement.”

Buckley was, after all, a devout Roman Catholic of a certain age. That brings with it a deontological view of ethics and a fixed view of sin. He could love the sinner but hate the sin. Sullivan quotes his infamous exchange with Gore Vidal, in which he retorted to being called a “cypto-Nazi” by calling his antagonist a “goddamned queer.” Less well known is what happened later:

Buckley apologized to Vidal, but wrote that “the man who in his essays proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher.”

That’s pretty standard Christian theology.

It should be noted, too, that the exchange took place in 1968, an era when liberal peaceniks like Arlo Guthrie threw around the word “faggot” without the slightest hint of venom or embarrassment; times change.

Buckley’s deontological ethics on the subject of gay issues sometimes manifested itself in rather amusing ways. Several of the remembrances I’ve seen since his passing yesterday have mentioned his suggestion that, “Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals.”

I’d add an exchange I recall from one of his “Firing Line” debates from a quarter century or more ago in which he argued that, for religiously devout parents to urge their children to be abstinent but that, if they couldn’t, they should use condoms to avoid getting AIDS was the equivalent of telling them that stealing was a sin but that, if they decided to commit burglaries, they should by all means wear gloves. Intellectually, it was a brilliant point. And from the perspective of a religious true believer, he was likely right. From any other, though, the moral equivalence of consensual sex and burglary is ridiculous.

John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan see great similarity’s between Ron Paul and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. John Podhoretz and Richard Fernandez, though, see more similarities between Paul and Ralph Nader. Ed Morrissey, meanwhile, thinks he’s this years’ Howard Dean.

To the extent he’s following any of those parallels, I’d go with Dean.

As Derbyshire notes, Buckley’s conservatism was founded on anti-Communism as a principle that united otherwise disparate ideologues. Paul’s brand of libertarianism is relatively isolationist and lacks a unifying principle to rally the different parts of the Republican constituency.

Nader ran as an independent to the left of Al Gore and cost his erstwhile party the presidency. I take Paul at his word that, should he not win the Republican nomination, he’ll bow out of the 2008 race. Were he to nonetheless run as an independent, though, it’s far from clear to me that he draws more Republicans than Democrats. While there has been a strong libertarian strain in the GOP since at least Barry Goldwater, there has been a social libertarian strain in the Democratic Party even longer.

Dean, though, strikes me as the likeliest analog. Both raised wild sums of money from a highly energized online constituency and seemed to be the only candidate in their party’s field that sparked genuine excitement. Neither, though, seemed to have the experience or disposition to pass the “gravitas” threshold expected of those who would be president.

The difference between Paul and Dean is that Paul’s campaign is still active and he therefore still has a theoretical chance. He’s got the deepest support of any candidate in the Republican field. Until he wins a primary, though, I’m not likely to be convinced that his support is very broad.

Matt Yglesias notes that the Democratic presidential aspirants are having a difficult time answering the seemingly straightforward question, “Should illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses?”

The problem with saying “yes” isn’t just that it’s unpopular, it’s that it’s unpopular because it sounds ridiculous.

Quite right. I understand the argument that we’ve got millions of illegal aliens in the country driving now sans license and that, since we’re unlikely to take the steps to end that situation, we might as well do what we can to have them at least break the law safely. Still, the idea that we’re going to have people who are violating our laws by simply being here line up in a government building to get issued a license that makes it even harder to enforce said laws is mind boggling.

In the early 1980s, when the AIDS scare was at its height and long before the treatment protocols that now make allow people to leave indefinitely with the disease, there was a spirited debate about teaching safe sex practices in schools, advertising condoms on television, and so forth. Bill Buckley made the interesting analogy that we would not teach our children that burglary was immoral but that, were they to decide to break into people’s homes despite that fact, they should be all means where gloves so as to minimize the chances of getting caught. Ultimately, though, Buckley’s side lost that argument because we rightly calculated that teenagers (and single adults, for that matter) were going to have sex regardless and that the public health consequences of that trumped the moral values concerns.

In this case, though, it’s unlikely the “safety first” argument will prevail. While teenagers could engage in unsafe sex without their parents’ permission, illegal aliens can’t get state-sanctioned drivers’ licenses without the active cooperation of the state. Having the state turning a blind eye to illegality in order to achieve a theoretical increase in public safety is a hard sell.

Dean Esmay is conducting a purge that he likens to Bill Buckley’s shunning of the John Birchers: “You can be an Islamophobe, or you can contribute to Dean’s World. You cannot do both.” He lays down a set of principles that must be adhered to by “front-page contributors, submitters, or even commenters.”

The one that seems to be giving people the most problem is #3: “Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.”

Ultimately, I think, the issue is with a single word: “inherently.”

All the major monotheistic religions of which I am aware can be and have been interpreted dogmatically. They can be and have been interpreted to command lesser roles for those who are not adult male adherents to the One True Faith, against modernity, and for a unity of religious and societal law. So far as I’m aware, however, only one has managed to keep itself in the Dark Ages in most of the places where it is the predominant faith.

Then again, there are plenty of people who call themselves “Muslims” living in the United States and other Western countries who have embraced modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, and democratic pluralism. Those people are considered heretics by many sects of Islam.

If one can be a “cafeteria Muslim” and still be a “Muslim,” then Dean’s statement is correct.

Over at The Corner today, Byron York wonders if a Lamont victory tomorrow will “truly be the Triumph of the Blogs” and provides some interesting numbers concerning the netroots and Lamont’s campaign war chest:

A new poll of the Lamont-Lieberman race has Ned Lamont ahead in Connecticut, 51-45. A look at the lefty blogs shows that the netroots types are trying very hard to keep their excitement in check, despite the recent polls — cautious optimism is all they will allow themselves.

Of course, if Lamont wins, it will be the Triumph of the Blogs. But looking at campaign finance reports this morning, it’s hard to see that that would be the real meaning of a Lamont victory.

According to PoliticalMoneyLine, Lamont had raised $4,116,131 through July 19. (The figures are undoubtedly much higher now.) But $2,501,500 of that came from one contributor: Ned Lamont. Nearly all the rest, $1,607,371, came in contributions from individuals. (Lamont, in a point of great pride, listed just $3,784 from PACs.)

Now go to actblue.com, the clearinghouse for most netroots fundraising. According to figures on the site, which are likely much more up to date than the FEC records on PoliticalMoneyLine, Lamont has raised $298,068 from individuals contributing through blogs that take part in actblue. The site breaks down the figures by individual blogs or groups of blogs. For example, a consortium of three blogs, Firedoglake (featuring the hot blogger of the moment in Connecticut, Jane Hamsher), DownWithTyranny, and Crooks&Liars, has raised $60,123.33 from 1,354 donors. The larger Netroots Candidates group, coordinated through MyDD, has raised $104,543 from 2,913 contributions. Smaller blogs have raised far less; myleftwing, for example, has raised $100.

So what does this say? Because of reporting times, the figures don’t quite match up (Lamont has surely contributed a lot more to himself by now), but the rough numbers are these: Lamont has raised $4.1 million, $2.5 million of which came from himself and $298,000 of which came from bloggers. Now, $298,000 is not nothing. But is it the sort of fundraising power that will upend Democratic Party politics? And will a Lamont victory truly be the Triumph of the Blogs?

Later, Byron adds his two cents in another post:

If Lamont wins, it would be the first victory for the netroots after more than a dozen defeats, so the celebration would be deafening. And they would deserve some credit; certainly the bloggers injected a lot of energy into the race. In addition, as far as news coverage is concerned, they used their (temporary) advantage of being the newest new thing. “There’s a premium on bloggers now,” a Center for American Progress trainer told would-be blogger-pundits at the YearlyKos convention in June. “There is a window following this conference to try to make yourselves available to the media…You are the new cool kids on the block, and you should leverage that now.”

But in terms of money, which is the thing about the blogs that originally got Democratic politicians’ attention, a Lamont victory would show that the netroots at a fever pitch of enthusiasm can help a largely self-financed candidate win. Again, that’s not nothing. But it’s not a revolution, either.

Given Lamont’s lead in the polls over Lieberman on the eve of Connecticut’s Democratic primary, it’s interesting to contemplate how much responsibility for Lamont’s rise belongs to the liberal blogosphere. Byron seems to be concluding that the netroots have had somewhere between a modest and significant impact.

As for myself, I’m not entirely convinced that they have been all that significant in building support for Lamont within Connecticut which, after all, is really the only thing that counts. There is certainly no doubt that the netroots have steered the national spotlight onto this race. But does the ability to bring attention actually equal influence? Power? I’m not really convinced that it does.

For example, I recently moved back to Connecticut after six years in Washington, D.C. and what I have noticed is that people don’t just dislike Lieberman. They loathe him. My dad–a raging lib–had never heard the name Markos Moulitsas Zúniga until I asked him if he knew who he was. And he’s certainly more well-read and politically knowledgeable than the average Connecticutian. He’s supporting Lamont because he’s furious with the war in Iraq and appalled by what he perceives as Lieberman’s unwillingness to confront the Bush administration. Similarly, as I was going into the grocery store last week, I witnessed an exchange between a Lieberman supporter asking individuals to sign a petition and a man walking into the store. When asked if he would sign the petition, the man blurted out, “Joe Lieberman is a liar and he has betrayed me and the state of Connecticut.” It really doesn’t get any more simple than that, does it?

Now I realize that this is all anecdotal, but I think that it goes to the argument that there is a visceral hatred among liberals in Connecticut for Lieberman as the result of transference from President Bush. And while it’s certainly true that liberal bloggers have played a critical role in shaping the image of Lieberman as Bush’s lapdog in the blogosphere, it’s not known whether this has had any effect on how the vast majority of voters in Connecticut view Lieberman. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that, perhaps, the netroots have had no effect whatsoever.

And now a couple “if’s.” If Lamont wins tomorrow, there will be much self-congratulation among liberal bloggers. And, to some degree anyway, it will be warranted. But even if one thinks that Lamont owes everything to the netroots, all his win will demonstrate is that liberal bloggers can help you win a Democratic primary in one of the bluest states in the country. The question will then remain as to whether the netroots can help a candidate win a general election or possibly help the candidate lose. And if Lieberman loses tomorrow, we might see the answer to that question play out.

UPDATE: Allah Pundit has some thoughts on this not to mention a nice round-up too.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Donkey Cons co-author and Washington Times editor Robert Stacy McCain has some interesting thoughts on this at FrontPage Magazine in a piece entitled “Lamont’s Folly.” The lede:

If Karl Rove had a secret plan to destroy the Democratic Party, he could scarcely have dreamed up a more brilliant gambit than Ned Lamont’s primary challenge to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

I agree with him on the specifics although think there’s a tendency to overstate the larger impact of these things. The Dems have gone over the cliff a few times before and always manage to arise, like Wile E Coyote, to fight another day.

Still, throwing overboard a beloved, three term Senator who’s with the Dems probably 75% of the time in exchange for, at best, an amateur Democrat who will start off untrusted by his colleagues or, at worst, a Republican who never would have had a prayer against Lieberman, is just insane.

Then again, Bill Buckley, Tom Scott, and company did the same thing to Lowell Weicker 18 years ago and the GOP has managed to survive–if not ever regain that Senate seat.

Ralph Peters offers easily the cheeriest analysis of the current situation in Iraq that I have encountered from a knowledgable observer:

THE reporting out of Baghdad continues to be hysterical and dishonest. There is no civil war in the streets. None. Period.

Terrorism, yes. Civil war, no. Clear enough?

Yesterday, I crisscrossed Baghdad, visiting communities on both banks of the Tigris and logging at least 25 miles on the streets. With the weekend curfew lifted, I saw traffic jams, booming business — and everyday life in abundance.

Yes, there were bombings yesterday. The terrorists won’t give up on their dream of sectional strife, and know they can count on allies in the media as long as they keep the images of carnage coming. They’ll keep on bombing. But Baghdad isn’t London during the Blitz, and certainly not New York on 9/11.

It’s more like a city suffering a minor, but deadly epidemic. As in an epidemic, no one knows who will be stricken. Rich or poor, soldier or civilian, Iraqi or foreigner. But life goes on. No one’s fleeing the Black Death — or the plague of terror.

And the people here have been impressed that their government reacted effectively to last week’s strife, that their soldiers and police brought order to the streets. The transition is working.

While his underlying observations are likely right — most Iraqis just want to go on with their lives and each attack just makes them hate the terrorists more — this conclusion does not necessarily follow.

Still, Austin Bay notes that he wrote something similar himself back in March 2005:

Collect relatively isolated events in a chronological list and presto: the impression of uninterrupted, widespread violence destroying Iraq. But that was a false impression. Every day, coalition forces were moving thousands of 18-wheelers from Kuwait and Turkey into Iraq, and if the “insurgents” were lucky they blew up one. However, flash the flames of that one rig on CNN and, “Oh my God, America can’t stop these guys,” is the impression left in Boise and Beijing.

It is certainly the case that isolated attacks by guerrillas and terrorists can give the impression of a situation much worse than it is. After all, no one claims that the Israeli experiment with democracy is failing when they have a run of suicide bombers.

Still, if the violence in the streets can discourage Bill Buckley and Bill Kristol from the safety of their living rooms, one imagines that it is much harder to keep the faith in the streets of Baghdad.