Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader saw this piece by John Yoo on Ricochet and felt like sharing: Pirates: Still the Enemy of All Mankind.

There is nothing in the piece that you don’t already know if you’ve ever read this site before (or ever read Fear and Loathing in Georgetown). But your Maximum Leader makes it a point of always trying to re-link articles that mention “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!”

By the way, if you haven’t seen The Wind and the Lion, it is worth your time.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has no political capital to expend so his suddenly wading in from the sidelines on the “Ground Zero Mosque” is only slightly less interesting than President Obama wading in suddenly from the sidelines on the same issue.

By now, unless you live under a rock, you have heard that a group wants to put a mosque in a building a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site.

So… Let your Maximum Leader just unload on this issue, and others on the periphery of the issue…

To speak directly to the issue of the mosque…

There are two questions at the heart of the mosque issue. The first question is can a mosque be built near the site of the World Trade Center attacks? The second question is do people want a mosque built near the site of the World Trade Center attacks?

The first question, the rarely asked question, in this discussion is so very important and so constantly overlooked that it makes most of the people on both sides of this “debate” seem like drooling idiots. Can the mosque be located in the building in question? So long as local zoning laws and building codes are followed it can. Of course it can. There is no legal reason why you can’t put a mosque in that building.

It was the this first question that President Obama was trying to address in his remarks on the subject recently. Now let your Maximum Leader go on the record and say that he wonders why the hell the President would inject himself into this “debate.” It is a loser all around for him. It makes no sense, from a political perspective, to comment on this issue. Sure my liberal friends can say “He needed to use the bully pulpit to do the right thing.” Yeah, your Maximum Leader can see that. But in this case doing the “right thing” diminishes the President’s ability to do the right thing later. He is spending political capital (that he is losing at a rapid rate) on an issue that so inflames peoples sensibilities that there is no possibility of coming out ahead. Sure the president is “right on principle” as the linked Washington Post peice says, but he is completely wrong on politics. Furthermore, President Obama’s opinion on this matter cannot affect the situation one bit. The president isn’t on the Zoning Board for lower Manhattan. He doesn’t own the property. He isn’t a stakeholder in the neighborhood. His opinion ain’t gonna change a thing.

In fact, President Obama’s opinion and the opinion of your Maximum Leader are worth about the same in this “debate.” Neither of us are contributing to the discussion. We are throwing our opinions into the crashing noise of raised voices that passes for debate on this subject. We are just two more voices crying out into the cacaphony. Two more voices that, frankly speaking, don’t need to be heard on this.

Of course, your Maximum Leader is a lowly blogger with minimal following and no future in politics short of an armed coup and Barack Obama is President of the United States. He is coming up with the short straw in this game.

Your Maximum Leader hasn’t addressed the second question yet. Does your Maximum Leader want a mosque built on the site discussed? When this “debate” first began his answer was that he didn’t care much one way or the other. He sympathized with the many who just didn’t want the mosque so near the World Trade Center site; but in the end he figured out that NYC officials and stakeholders in the project would do the right thing.

Your Maximum Leader has changed his mind now. He wants the mosque built. He is willing to stand up for the principle involved. The principle involved is twofold. The first is a straight property rights issue. If you follow local laws you should be able to build what you want on property you own. If the landowners want to lease the space for a mosque, great! Let them do it. The mosque shouldn’t get any special treatment or concessions. If they can put a mosque there they should. The second issue is the religious issue. This site is a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site and was damaged in the attacks of September 11. But it wasn’t the object of the attack. The building in question wasn’t destroyed and rebuilt. How close is too close? From what your Maximum Leader reads there are some mosques in the general vicinity already. Why is this one a big problem? Would it be a big problem if it were a block further away? Two blocks further? 10 blocks further? Would “society” object to a Christian Church being put in the same building? A Buddhist temple? A meeting hall for the followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

This brings your Maximum Leader to a issue that has now been simmering in his mind for a year or two. How long are we going to fetishize the whole lower Manhattan area around the World Trade Center site? Your Maximum Leader doesn’t like calling the site Ground Zero. He doesn’t because Ground Zero is a term that can be used in any disaster. He is concerned that at some point in the future people will be upset by some other disaster site being called “Ground Zero.” Sad isn’t it.

If your Maximum Leader could point out a few items… The World Trade Center site is very valuable real estate. He should be redeveloped (and is being redeveloped). But many Americans have a maudlin fixation on the site. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks there was a sort of consensus that we needed to get on with rebuilding the World Trade Center site. Now your Maximum Leader wonders if we are going to start objecting to certain uses of the redeveloped space? Would a muslim charity renting office space in a new World Trade Center building be objectionable? Would investment bankers (given their role in the recent economic troubles) be objectionable in that they weren’t a “good enough” type of organization. Should we just build a mega-public safety center on the site and fill it with Firefighters and Police officers?

Is your Maximum Leader the only one that worries about this? (Well… When he’s not waxing eloquent over Lindsay Lohan and mastubating furiously Skippy might have some similar concerns. But that could just be your Maximum Leader projecting on Skippy.) We still use Pearl Harbor. Is it “less sacred” than the World Trade Center site? We have built all over Bunker (and Breed’s) Hill? Is that site less meaningful because of it’s continued use? Is it just a question of scale? If more patriots died at Bunker Hill would we have objected to building on and around the site?

Your Maximum Leader isn’t advocating that we all forget the attacks of September 11th. Not at all. But at some point we need to take a more practical approach to how we will use the land of lower Manhattan.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t running for political office. He isn’t planning on running for political office. Indeed, some of the things he’s written in this space (including what is coming in this post) would likely keep sensible people from voting for him. Lucky for your Maximum Leader that he is not seeking to represent the people of Virginia (or Kentucky let’s say) in the United States Senate. Pseudo-benevolent Dictators can have more skeletons in the closet than can someone running for US Senate.

But here is a hypothetical question for you… Let us say that one night in college your Maximum Leader happened to have a little problem with self-retraint and decided to enlist the help of Smallholder and go out and knock on the door of a particularly hot girl we knew. When she opened the door we blindfolded here and tied up up and then took her to our sooper seekret hideout. Upon arriving at our sooper seekret hideout we unblindfolded her and told her that she’d have to pound shots with us and and then we’d initiate her into our cruel cult of personality…

No biggie right?

Just another wacky Friday night at college with nothing better to do…

Now, your Maximum Leader isn’t saying that he ever did anything like this in college. Nor is saying that Smallholder did anything like this. On thinking back, it is likely between the two of us we could have found a few girls we knew who would gladly have volunteered for such an outing. (Kinky eh?)

Then again… Neither your Maximum Leader nor Smallholder are running for the US Senate… Unlike someone else you may have heard of.

By the way, on the Villain-o-meter this type of behaviour deserves 4 marks (out of 10). If the “abducted girl” developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome like attachment to her “abductors” and became their somewhat willing love-slave this would get 6 marks (out of 10).

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, a good anglophile, is a fan of the good ole days of the British Empire. He is also a fan of the various regiments who’s long and illustrious history is wrapped up with the tales of Empire.

Your Maximum Leader has always been a fan of the most kick-ass regiment of soliders ever in the history of the world, the Gurkhas. If you knew your Maximum Leader many moons ago while he was in high school you’ll know that he lived for tales of Gurkha prowess on the battlefield. (Way back when he seems to remember writing a letter to the British Ambassador to the US expressing outrage that the UK was considering eliminating the Gurkha regiment.)

Anyhoo…

It is a sad day for the Gurkhas, for Britain, for lovers of freedom and for all who dare to stand up for what is good and right in the world when a private in the Gurkha regiment is punished for doing what his regiment has been doing for over a hundred years - namely kicking-arse.

It pains your Maximum Leader to say it, but perhaps the terrorists HAVE won…

To wit: Gurkha ordered back to UK after beheading dead Taliban fighter. Sadly, the private in question beheaded the Taliban fighter only after the Taliban guy was dead. Your Maximum Leader would have preferred that the private beheaded the Taliban guy in order to cause his death…

So here is the jist of the story…

A Gurkha soldier has been flown back to the UK after hacking the head off a dead Taliban commander with his ceremonial knife to prove the dead man’s identity.
The private, from 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, was involved in a fierce firefight with insurgents in the Babaji area of central Helmand Province when the incident took place earlier this month.
His unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man.
The Gurkhas had intended to remove the Taliban leader’s body from the battlefield for identification purposes.
But they came under heavy fire as their tried to do so. Military sources said that in the heat of battle, the Gurkha took out his curved kukri knife and beheaded the dead insurgent.
He is understood to have removed the man’s head from the area, leaving the rest of his body on the battlefield.
This is considered a gross insult to the Muslims of Afghanistan, who bury the entire body of their dead even if parts have to be retrieved.
[…]
The incident, which is being investigated by senior commanders, is hugely embarrassing to the British Army, which is trying to build bridges with local Afghan communities who have spent decades under ­Taliban rule.
It comes just days after a rogue Afghan soldier murdered three British troops from the same Gurkha regiment.
If the Gurkha being investigated by the Army is found guilty of beheading the dead enemy soldier, he will have contravened the Geneva Conventions which dictate the rules of war. Soldiers are banned from demeaning their enemies.
The Gurkha now faces disciplinary action and a possible court martial. If found guilty, he could be jailed.
He is now confined to barracks at the Shorncliffe garrison, near Folkestone, Kent.

So, let your Maximum Leader make sure he gets this… Gurkhas were attacked by the Taliban and three Gurkhas were killed. Three days later Gurkhas go out and do what they are ordered to do, namely kill a Taliban baddie. While taking fire from other Taliban baddies the private in question cuts off the mission (accomplished by the way) target’s head and high-tails it out of the fire-fight with proof of the mission’s success. For that the private in question could be jailed?

Great Jeezey Chreezey! What the hell is this world coming to? Your Maximum Leader would give that private a medal, promotion to corporal, and a nice whetstone to keep his kukri sharp as shit.

To all the Taliban who are offended by the fact that they cannot bury their scumbag buddy intact your Maximum Leader says: Reap the whirlwind muthafuckahs! Attack our cities and pay with your heads! War is hell arseholes!

If they convict this poor private of anything your Maximum Leader will officially say that we should just give up. We should just start having our women wear burkas, destroy our distilleries, re-consecrate our churches as mosques and just become subervient wussies who can give up all Western Civilization.

By the way… Your Maximum Leader has a replica kukri. One day he hopes to do something worthwhile enough to deserve the honor of a Gurkha (or former Gurkha) giving him a real one…

Of course, he could just go and buy one from here he supposes…

Also, your Maximum Leader doffs his bejeweled mylan cap to Wonder Woman for the pointer to this story, which he regrets missing in the first place.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pleased to report that he can now see clearly again. As he reported earlier in the week his glasses got screwed up. We think that they got exposed to some heat somehow and got tempered. This tempering caused very small “waves” to form on the lens. When your Maximum Leader put the glasses on, he got the feeling like he was looking constantly through those heat waves you see coming up off asphalt during the summer. It made him sick to his stomach after a few minutes.

So your Maximum Leader tried to trot out his old prescription and get a new set of glasses. Sadly, since the prescription was three years old no one wanted to fill it. So, your Maximum Leader went over to his eye doctor and got a check up. He was clear. No signs of bad deseases of the eye. No deterioration of his vision either. In fact his eyes were unchanged in 3 years. That is a good thing.

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader has new glasses and can see just fine now.

Your Maximum Leader hasn’t blogged much this week because of the glasses issue (which really wasn’t resolved until Wednesday) and a desire to get some of the books off his nightstand. You see your Maximum Leader can read without his glasses. In fact his vision at book-reading distance is quite good. So he read a lot. He is nearly done with two baseball books he recently received as gifts. The books are George Will’s “Men at Work” and Jason Turbow’s “Baseball Codes”. Your Maximum Leader highly recommends Will’s book to any baseball fan. It is certainly one of the best baseball books out there. Turbow’s book is a fun read. Your Maximum Leader can’t say that he learned much from the Turbow book, but it is filled with so many entertaining baseball yarns that it was a quick read.

Now your Maximum Leader is going to try and knock out Lord Norwich’s “Travellers Companion to Venice” and Christopher Moore’s “Lamb” before too long.

Your Maximum Leader is also going to try and get rid of all the old programming on his DVR and free up some space on that hard drive. Last night your Maximum Leader and Villainette #1 finished the last two episodes of Joss Whedon’s ill-fated series “Dollhouse.” The penultimate episode was okay, but would have been better if it had been the last episode. The final episode was disappointing from the perspective of the story. It seemed rushed, badly edited (in fact it felt like it was 3 hrs long when shot and only 1 hr long when it aired), and just thrown together. The best thing about the final episode was the Whedon was able to throw in a few of his favorite actors from previous outings (like Felicia Day from “Dr Horrible” and many members of the “Firefly” series).

For your intellectual curiosity, you should go and read one of the latest installments of FLG’s posts on time-horizons and their connections to politics/economics/world-view. FLG is probably on to something with this line of thinking.

That is all for now.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has seen S.E. Cupp on Fox a few times. He tries to read her pieces over at the Daily Caller. He also gets her tweets. She is an interesting commentator and he’s enjoyed what he’s read.

Of course now she is doing her best to catapult herself into the stratosphere of sexy political commentators. How you may ask?

Please read: S.E. Cupp’s “Can bacon save the world?”

Keep the bacon coming S.E..

Also worthy of note about S.E. Cupp… She is a hunter, publish author, and rational atheist who doesn’t hate religion.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t pay as close attention to the vast majority of opinions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. He views this as something of a failing. He generally finds SCOTUS opinions to be an interesting read and it is always good to know how the highest court in the land is applying the Constitution in different arenas of public life.

Of course, there are some issues and cases which your Maximum Leader follows closely. Take for example the case decided today of McDonald v. City of Chicago. In that case the Court incorporated the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to citizens of all states.

Now, your Maximum Leader has not yet read the various opinions and dissents in McDonald yet (and according to Jonathan Adler at Volokh the opinions and dissents go on for 250 pages - so it might take a little while to read and digest); but the summaries he’s read all seem pretty promising.

Your Maximum Leader will give a little cheer (Huzzah!) to the 5 members of the majority who did (in your Maximum Leader’s opinion) the right thing in incorprorating the Second Amendment to the states.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader heard on the radio this morning that Robert Byrd, the longest serving Senator in history, had died this morning. If you have not, you should read the 6 (internet) page obit in the Washington Post.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to say about Senator Byrd. This is due to a reticence about speaking ill of the dead so soon after they pass; but also because he doesn’t have much to add to the big picture of his life. Your Maximum Leader can’t recall an issue on which he agreed strongly with Senator Byrd. He can recall a few where he did disagree strongly with Senator Byrd. Your Maximum Leader does have tremendous admiration for the man because of his knowledge of the minutae of the Senate’s arcane rules. Your Maximum Leader loves parliamentary procedure and the ways it can (and frankly should be) used in the legislative process. While he has not read it, your Maximum Leader understands Byrd’s book on Senate Procedure is a classic of the genre.

Rest in peace Senator. Your work here is done.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a big fan of, but sadly not a subscriber to, The Economist. It is so well written, well researched and generally not crazy. There aren’t many publications superior to The Economist.

Your Maximum Leader subscribes to various audio feeds from The Economist. This past week there was a particularly interesting audio report that he thought he’s share with you. For your listening pleasure, The Economist on the State of the American Right.

Your Maximum Leader agrees with so many points on this commentary that he think’s he’ll just present it without further comment.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, from time to time, sees where some federal judge orders a locality to do something to comply with the Voting Rights Act. In most cases your Maximum Leader thinks that the judges are acting within the past interpretations of the Act. But every once and a while some judge does something really wacky.

Case in point… Port Chester, NY. In Port Chester a federal judge has ordered that every voter get 6 votes to cast in an election for Village Trustee. According to the AP piece:

Voters in Port Chester, 25 miles northeast of New York City, are electing village trustees for the first time since the federal government alleged in 2006 that the existing election system was unfair.

Although the village of about 30,000 residents is nearly half Hispanic, no Latino had ever been elected to any of the six trustee seats, which until now were chosen in a conventional at-large election. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won.

Federal Judge Stephen Robinson said that violated the Voting Rights Act, and he approved a remedy suggested by village officials: a system called cumulative voting, in which residents get six votes each to apportion as they wish among the candidates. He rejected a government proposal to break the village into six districts, including one that took in heavily Hispanic areas.

Your Maximum Leader really ought to try and find out what was at the root of the initial allegation put forth by the federal government in 2006. In a way he hopes that it was something more than the fact that no hispanic has been elected as a Trustee even though half the community is hispanic.

From what is written here, it seems as though this is a case of a federal judge (Stephen Robinson in fact) trying to get a particular result from an otherwise free election. If the case is as simple as it is depicted in the AP piece, then the underlying assumption is that since “nearly half” the village population is hispanic and there has never been a hispanic village Trustee there must be some civil rights violation. This seems like a wrong-headed assumption to your Maximum Leader.

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that there has not been any voter intimidation or other patently illegal method of manipulating the election results. What we are left with is an election with low voter turn-out and a number of candidates running for a 6 available seats. Is it unfair that the hispanic community is “splitting” their vote among the available candidates in a way that happens to prevent a candidate of hispanic origin from being elected?

Your Maximum Leader supposes that another, rather insidious, assumption here is that hispanics should only vote for hispanics and if they don’t it is unfair. Is your Maximum Leader the only person that gets this out of this piece?

Not only are these assumptions disturbing, but what the hell is up with giving voters 6 votes to cast? That doesn’t seem right. It seems positively… Communist… Or just Socialist… (Or perhaps just very Italian.) Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure why dividing the village into precincts wasn’t a good idea…

The whole settlement of this case seems to be wrong-headed in so many ways.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has to out of his way to get news about goings-on in Canada in the US news. Call him crazy, but he likes to know what is going on with our great neighbour to the north (and largest trading partner). Your Maximum Leader likes Canada. He’s liked pretty much every Canadian he’s ever met. It is a good place.

But imagine how sad he is to know that the only news he can get (without going out of his way) about Canada is about a fake lake being made for the G-20 conference.

So your Maximum Leader feels he must call out his good friend Skippy and ask “So is this “fakelakegate” really the biggest news in Canada right now?”

And a good follow-up might be… “Really… Nearly a billion dollars to protect the G-20 summit? Couldn’t you just not protect some of the leaders attending and hope for the best? How about you skimp on protecting all the ones from a parliamentary democracy in that the PMs are likely just glorified party leaders and can be easily replaced?”

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been following the fall-out from the Israeli raid on the “humanitarian aid” ship from Turkey. Sure the Israeli’s, in this instance, might have been a little heavy-handed. But really, how much of a “blockade” are they really running here? Bascially the Israelis stop every ship and vehicle going into the Gaza Strip to search for weapons. The real “humanitarian” aid isn’t being stopped and turned back. (At best it is detained.)

Your Maximum Leader has, for just about as long as he can remember, be very pro-Israel. He’s not saying that Israel is always right and everyone else is wrong. That isn’t the case. But he will generally side with Israel all the time because they are the one beacon of civilization (as your Maximum Leader understands it) in the region.

Sadly though, Israel, like the West in general, is doomed.

How does one put it delicately? The Israelis are going to be fucked out of existance. Quite literally. They aren’t having enough babies. Demographically they are screwed. Before too long the (Westernized Jewish) Israelis are going to be a minority in their own country; out populated by (not Westernized and Arab) Israelis. Once that happens all bets are off.

(NB: If Bar Refaeli wanted to do something to help her country - which she probably doesn’t by the way - she’d get knocked up and start having all sorts of really really good-looking babies.)

Frankly… It isn’t much better in Europe. Europe will be the next to fall (after Israel). The day will come when non-westernized immigrants (mostly muslims) will be the ones running France and Germany. Of course, Western ideas of social/moral/political relativism will hasten the end.

Then it will be the USA, Canada and Australia as the last bastions of Western Civilization…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader apologizes in advance to the late Robert Frost (as well as to his fans and admirers everywhere).

Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire, I side with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I know that 225 British nuclear warheads combined with 5, 113 American ones would do the trick.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been thinking a little about the primary results from yesterday. He thinks it all boils down to this: incumbents ought to watch out. Now since there are more Democratic incumbents than Republican ones that could be a boon for Republicans. We’ll see. It is still a long way to November and there is no telling what will happen. All in all it will be a fun ride.

But that little tidbit of esoteric commentary isn’t why your Maximum Leader started to write this post…

No… He is writing this because he wants to direct you to a short post by Fishersville Mike. Go and read Mike’s post “He’s a stud. That’s all.” You’ll like it.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that David Cameron of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom has kissed Her Majesty’s hand and accepted the task of forming a government. A minority government, but a government just the same. Your Maximum Leader would be interested to learn what concessions the Liberal Democrats might have extracted from the Conservatives to assure that the budget doesn’t fail later this month. Congratulations to Mr. Cameron.

Your Maximum Leader has also noticed many American conservatives getting all warm and tingly about the Tory government in the UK. This is curious to him. First of all, the Tories are a minority government. This is a precarious place to be in a Parliamentary system. At any moment the government could collapse on a major vote that doesn’t go their way. So it seems a little odd to celebrate being in such a position. Sure, the Conservatives came back from a long way down and ousted the Labour Party from power, but they didn’t quite climb fully to the top of the greasy pole. They are sort of hanging off the top of the greasy pole by their fingernails.

The next unusual thing for your Maximum Leader is that American conservatives seem to think that British Conservatives are birds of a feather. Sure they share the title “conservative” but that really doesn’t mean that they are very similar. It is fair to say that American conservatives and British Conservatives both like “small government.” But “small government” to a British Conservative doesn’t mean ending the National Health Service - that huge socialist organization that runs health care in the UK. A British Conservative wants to keep down taxes and spending and due to Britain’s current financial condition they might actually have to deliver on the keeping down spending part. Your Maximum Leader hears lots of talk from American conservatives about keeping down spending; but they have not had a good track record in that department.

Your Maximum Leader is happy to see Labour out in the UK. He would be happier to have the Tories at 326 seats in Parliament rather than 306 or 308 or whatever non-326 number they have. He hopes that the Tories can hang on and make some good changes in about a year or so and then call another election and get an outright majority.

Of course, your Maximum Leader has also been thinking about American conservatives. He understands the angst that is manifesting itself in the Tea Party movement. Indeed, he feels the same angst in a number of ways. But all in all your Maximum Leader is not a Tea Party type of guy. He isn’t a protester sort. He is more a “peer over his glasses while reading the paper in the club to look at the protester through the window” type of guy. Of course, because your Maximum Leader isn’t the protester sort of fellow he sometimes wonders if he is conservative enough to satisfy some of his fellow-travellers.

Your Maximum Leader reflected on this point, namely his conservative street-cred, while reading a nifty little piece from Newsweek on how Reagan wasn’t a Reagan Conservative. It is fun to read about the crack-up of the conservative movement in a left-of-center weekly (that the Washington Post is trying to sell off by the by). It is fun because from time to time the liberal movement in the US has had similar crack-up moments and your Maximum Leader can say to himself “Ah, how soon they forget.”

Of course, it isn’t too fun to read a wonderful turn of phrase (in the Newsweek piece) that could be used to describe how your Maximum Leader’s feeling. That turn of phrase is: “…the RNC recently toyed with the idea of imposing a purity test on potential GOP candidates. Comply with eight of the party’s 10 “Reaganite” principles, the thinking went, and you’re worthy of funding. Fall short, and you might as well be Leon Trotsky.” Yup. When he talks to many conservatives and reads many conservative blogs he has frequented for years he is beginning to feel a little like Leon Trotsky in 1925. You know that “you’re still in the party but we will strip you of our Red Army positions and advise you to take a little vacation” feeling. Next thing you know you’ll be on the outs with the XVth Party Congress and living in Mexico on the lookout for NKVD agents with ice picks.

Look, your Maximum Leader is a small government fiscally conservative type of guy. But at some level we have to realize that small government isn’t achieved by tax cuts alone. It is achieved by spending cuts. It is achieved by cutting entitlements and bloated programs.

While your Maximum Leader is just laying it out here allow him to say that he’d like to see the Bush tax cuts made permanent and then just table the whole “tax cut” idea until we can cut some spending. Let him go even further (the real crazy talk), he’d be willing to let the Bush tax cuts expire if he could get some Democrats to come over to the dark side on spending cuts.

Egads! Did you read that last sentance! Your Maximum Leader would be willing to compromise on principle in order to advance on some other front! It is about priorities people. In a perfect world your Maximum Leader would be a pseudo-benevolent autocrat and we wouldn’t have these problems. But we don’t live in a perfect world. And our imperfect political system (which your Maximum Leader loves almost all the time) isn’t set up to move effectively or swiftly. But with a little political will progress in important areas could be made. Frankly, time isn’t on our side in the long-term and someone (or a whole bunch of elected someones more accurately) are going to have to fall on their swords to get things done before the US goes the way of Greece (and soon Portugal, Spain and Italy).

If you read the Newsweek piece linked above you would see that Andrew Romano mentions the “GOP Purity Test” as a benchmark to judge the behavior of Republican presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George HW Bush and George W Bush. Romano’s benchmarking is sort of stupid actually if you had read the 10 points on which the GOP attempted (and failed as your Maximum Leader recalls) to pass. The 10 points are crafted to be relevant to the current political situation (more or less). Let us see how your Maximum Leader might fare if he were scored on these 10 points. Here we go!

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus.” bill Your Maximum Leader does favor a smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficit and lower taxes. He must admit that he doesn’t know that opposing Obama’s “stimulus” is all it takes to demonstrate a commitment to those four points. Now your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that the “Obama stimulus” was as necessary as the “Bush stimulus” was but he is going to go on the the record and say that if it were not for a massive government intervention in the economy we would have been, in a word, fucked. So, your Maximum Leader didn’t (and doesn’t) oppose the stimulus. What about these other items in number one. Sadly they aren’t all going to happen at once. Your Maximum Leader would rank them thus: Lower deficits is most important; smaller government is next - and would naturally follow, if you are cutting the deficit (ie: spending) you are cutting government; then smaller national debt, then lower taxes. Sadly most conservatives will put lower taxes on the top of the list and hope for the best on the others. Your Maximum Leader actually did believe in the 1980s and 1990s that if you cut taxes you might get Congress to cut spending too. He doesn’t believe that any more. Lowering the deficit through spending cuts is the way to go.

(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare. Your Maximum Leader is safe on this one. The President’s health care reform package is awful and should be repealed.

(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation. Okay, once again your Maximum Leader is good here. He does favor market-based reforms and does oppose cap and trade.

(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check. Whoa! Three in a row. He does oppose card check.

(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants. The streak ends. Look, your Maximum Leader is fully supportive of legal immigration. He is fully in favor of assimilation to American society and values (although we can thoughtfully debate the full scope of American values). But he has said time and time again that he is in favor of dramatically expanding opportunities for legal immigration. He likes the idea of guest worker programs for example. And he both supports securing our borders and opposes deporting illegal immigrants. To be honest the only workable solution to the problem of illegal immigrants is some sort of amnesty program. The first step should be securing the border. Then the next step is some sort of expansion of legal immigration and amnesty program for those illegals who want to take advantage of it. (NB: please remember that amnesty doesn’t mean citizenship automatically. It means a way of becoming legal and then, possibly, becoming a citizen.) Furthermore, your Maximum Leader would be in favor of examining a Constitutional Amendment that would require that one have at least one American parent to be born an American and remove the automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States. (That actually is pretty durned radical in your Maximum Leader’s mind.)

(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges. What the hell does this actually mean? What is victory in Iraq and Afghanistan? That isn’t really clear. Your Maximum Leader believes that we should support our troops to the level required to meet clear goals. If we aren’t willing to set these goals and work towards them then we shouldn’t be in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat. What the hell does this mean? Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that the George W Bush Admininstration had a workable strategery in this area. Frankly, your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that President Obama has a workable strategery in this area either. But if your Maximum Leader had to choose between Obama’s path and GW Bush’s path, he’d go with Obama’s for the time being. Talk to people, make friends with other nations and build a coalition against Iran and North Korea. Going it alone and not talking didn’t get us very far.

(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act. Can’t do it. DoMA is unconstitutional as far as your Maximum Leader can tell and he would not support any plan to retain it or prop it up.

(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion. What? This doesn’t make any sense. Who is rationing and denying health care to vulnerable people? Private insurers right? The only way to do this would be for the government to force private insurers to cover the vulnerable - or have government cover the vulnerable itself? Didn’t they read number 2 above? Your Maximum Leader is not an abortion supporter, so he has no trouble denying government funding for abortions. But he isn’t sure how all the rest of this works together.

(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership. Check. Full support on this one.

So… Let us review… Your Maximum Leader would score (grading as generously as possible) a big ole 4.5 out of 10. (He gave himself a half a point on #9. He thought about giving himself a half a point on #1 as well… but then thought better of it.)

Well… What do you know… If Andrew Romano was determining if your Maximum Leader was a Reagan Conservative using the criteria he does in his article; then your Maximum Leader would score about the same as the real Ronald Reagan. Amazing how that works.

Of course, your Maximum Leader isn’t exactly a Reagan Conservative as the term appears to be used now (which is ultimately Romano’s point in his article). Your Maximum Leader is a Reagan Conservative in as much as Ronald Reagan, and the “Age of Reagan” as it were powerful influences on the type of conservative your Maximum Leader became. In the end your Maximum Leader is a real old school conservative. The proper role of government is a limited one that supports the traditional liberties of Americans and is slow to change for the sake of change. Government should be interested in equal justice under law and the setting of sensible boundries in commerce and civil interaction. Men aren’t angels so we must have government; but men should be allowed freedom to live as they would like within established civil traditions. Centralization is, ultimately, dehumanizing because a centralized bureaucracy is only capable of working a system to the lowest common denominator. And when you work to the lowest common denominator you bring many more people down than you raise up. As much as figures like Reagan are political heros to your Maximum Leader; just as important are people like Robert Nozick and Michael Oakeshott.

So where does this rambling mess of crap leave your Maximum Leader? Well, perhaps he isn’t Leon Trotsky… Perhaps he’s more like Bob Bennett…

Carry on.