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RK has a familiar question:

It’s refreshing to hear a Christian Libertarian’s viewpoints. I did not previously think the two could overlap quite so well.You have mentioned your disagreements with the Libertarian Party’s stance on abortion and immigration. In past articles and blogs, you mentioned the Constitution Party as another valid alternative to the Republ-ocrat hegemony. My question is: Why have you chosen Libertarian over Constitution (Party)? It seems to me that your social views align more closely with the Constitution Party’s. I must disclose that I am a Constitution Party member, but have strong LP leanings. I made my decision to leave the Republican Party around the time I found your articles on WND.

While I respect both parties and enthusiastically endorse both over either of the ruling party’s factions, the Libertarian Party is far more to my liking despite its two major flaws. While I disagree with the reasoning that led to anti-libertarian positions on abortion and immigration, I understand it and consider the positions to be both reasonable and honest, if mistaken.

The Constitution Party’s position on the War on Drugs, on the other hand, is not only wrong-headed, but completely contradictory to its theoretical raison d’etre. This is the result of an ideological approach based on making a fetish of the Constitution as opposed to an intellectual approach based on limiting the depradations of government. In the long term, I expect the Constitution Party will likely be more amenable to the same compromises and rationalizations that have made a mockery of republican ideals in the Republican Party.

Ideally, I’d like to see a compromise wherein the Libertarians would abjure abortion and the Constitution Party would abandon the War on Drugs and seek a stronger intellectual basis for its constitutionalism.

I happened to scan a few pages of a chick book the other day. It’s called Princess, and it purports to be the true story of a Saudi Arabian princess. I have to say, I was largely left cold by the plight of the poor oppressed rich girls, as with a few exceptions, the most horrific events of the book were the predictable and easily avoidable consequences of the young women’s actions. And after the eponymous princess destroyed an Impressionist masterpiece in one of her childish tirades, I found myself rather hoping she’d meet with an end similar to those of her reality-challenged friends.

When in Rome, you don’t have to do as the Romans do, but it’s generally a good idea to obey Roman law if you aren’t prepared to experience the consequences.

But all of this is neither here nor there. What actually caught my attention – and so we finally meander towards the purpose of this post – was the attitude of the Saudi women to what appear to not so much be clitorectomies as removal of the external labia.

For more generations than Nura knew, a large number of the women of our family had been circumcised. Our mother was one of these women. She had been circumcised when she became a woman, a few weeks before she was wed. At age fourteen, when Nura became a woman, Mother followed the only tradition she knew and arranged for Nura’s circumcision to be performed in a small village some miles from Riyadh….

To the doctor’s surprise, it was my mother who had insisted upono the circumcision of her daughters. She herself had endured the rite… she could imagine no other path for her daughters than the one she herself had trod….

A disgusting practice, to be sure, and defended with an argument similar to that made by public school-educated parents who are planning to subject their children to the same education they experienced. The fact that these parents are as intellectually dead as the Saudi women are sensually crippled means that they are making their decisions on the false grounds of incomplete experience. In both cases, I think those who condemn their children to like fates have much for which to answer, as one’s own abuse, physical or intellectual, should inspire one to act to prevent the same from happening to the next generation instead of allowing the vicious cycle to be repeated.

When one understands that the teachers of the NEA are every bit as ignorant and prejudiced as the mutawas of Saudi Arabia, and that they serve much the same societal purpose, one soon discovers in oneself as little inclination to hand one’s children over to the former as to the latter.

As many of you know, I consider the Libertarian Party’s official position on abortion to be deeply flawed and anti-libertarian, if nevertheless superior to the Democratic and Republican realities. (I freely admit that the Republican platform is better, but their failure to pay any heed to their platform is one reason I left the party in the first place.)

A few weeks ago, the Pan-Gargler challenged me to consider my views on immigration in light of the Libertarian Party’s support of open borders, which is functionally equivalent to the de facto Democratic and Republican positions. I neither forgot nor backed down from that challenge, I merely required some time to think about a subject to which I had never devoted any substantial thought.

In any case, I have now reached my conclusions, and you can read them on Monday. In light of last week’s column, I did not wish for anyone to think that I was, like Brave Sir William, wont to duck a challenge.

I went over the text of Kerry’s speech. All it proved, in my opinion, is that if the American people are foolish enough to vote for this man, (or for his primary opponent, for that matter), they will deserve precisely what they get.

John Kerry is an astoundingly dishonest man whose ultimate goal is to be the same sort of symbolic tool that George Bush is by birthright. George Bush at least has the lineage and so has done only what was expected of him, while Kerry has enthusiastically sold his soul to reach the same point of usefulness to the PTBs. Useful enough to be given the reins in November? It is increasingly beginning to look that way.

We always value that which we acquire more than that which comes to us naturally.

From Elliott Wave International:

For many years, the credit-card industry wanted you to be able to use your plastic to buy your burger and fries at the drive-through. But the fast-food industry always politely said “no way,” since its business depends on how quickly their servers get you in and out. Making cashiers punch card numbers and hand you slips of paper to sign is no way to shave seconds off the average wait time per customer.

Yet the card industry was willing to bargain. It offered to waive the signature requirement and even to reduce the transaction fees for fast-food merchants. That’s enticing, but if you’re wondering why McDonald’s Corp. really agreed this past March to accept cards throughout its restaurant chain, you needn’t wonder any more:

“McDonald’s found the average transaction jumped from $4.50 to $7 when customers used debit and credit cards instead of cash,” according to a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal.

I wonder how much of the increase of the C component of GDP can be accounted for by that plastic effect. It’s no secret that debt has been funding our GDP expansion – it’s almost all G, which is always debt hence the imminent raising of the debt ceiling again – but it’s factored into C as well.

These levels of debt have never ended well in the past. I still wonder what is so new and different about computers and Greenspans “productivity miracle” leads adults to think it will be any different this time. I wonder just how low the NASDAQ has to go before people will start to wise up.

The Fraters Libertas pull no punches:

Now take a listen to retired Navy Captain, Charlie Plumly, who had Kerry, “under my command for two or three specific operations before his rapid exit.”

Plumly is even less charitable to your new bud than the admiral. His quotes on Kerry’s service include these colorful expressions, “Devious, self-absorbing, manipulative, disdain for authority, disruptive.”

And then he gives us this little jewel, “But the most common phrase would have been requires constant supervision.”

Apparently Plumly must have let him off his leash, as John Francois managed to film his Homeric epic, where, like wrathful Achilles, he descended upon the banks of the River Min-ko to wreak havoc and death upon the multitudinous foe.

Kerry is clearly a creepy self-promoter of the sort to put even Bill O’Reilly to shame, but that being said, I don’t doubt that his Vietnamiad made for a better film than Brad Pitt’s Troy. I carry no water for Bush, but it astounds me that even a single true-believing, mouth-breathing Democrat would embrace this phony. Howard Dean was a Leftist lunatic, but he was an honest Leftist lunatic. If Kerry had been a Texan, I have no doubt that he’d be a loud and proud Republican.

For Pete’s sake, even Doonesbury saw through this guy decades ago. Fortunately, as we learned with Clinton, those who seek power for its own sake seldom have any particular notion of what to do with it. It’s those who see it as a means instead of an end, like Lenin or Mao, that you really have to worry about.

From CNN/SI:

The Charlotte Bobcats and WNBA Sting are entering a partnership with the YMCA of Greater Charlotte to provide a number of promotional and educational initiatives. The Sting also announced that since its name no longer makes sense with the departure of the Hornets to New Orleans, the franchise will be renamed the Charlotte Bites.

Yeah, working closely with the YMCA should help convince everyone that the WNBA isn’t a bastion of freakishly tall homosexuals. Maybe they can get the Village People to do their new theme song if the Indigo Girls are busy. If there was ever any doubt that the number of individuals with their wires crossed in the population is nowhere near the 10 percent reported by Kinsley, it is the total failure of the WNBA. The WNBA has been embraced more fervently by lesbians than anything since the invention of the vibrator, but despite their enthusiasm and the nonstop advertisements crammed down a hostile NBA audience’s throat, it remains in its own weird little quasi-sporting ghetto with an average attendance less than 60 percent of that of US sporting powerhouse, Major League Soccer.

Madden 2004 probably has the best music of any video game ever. Good rock, solid rap, and the one track by Bone Crusher gets you more fired up for an approaching NFL season than anything recorded since the Monday Night Football song. I can’t even think about it without starting to tremble with anticipation like my dog when he sees me tearing a strip of fat off the ham while I’m making a sandwich.

Thank God for European soccer, because without it the spring/summer offseason would be unbearable. I usually don’t let myself play Madden or think about football until August 1, but one of the guys in our fantasy league is getting married so we had to move our draft up. Last year, after no less than four straight years of finishing first or second in the regular season then getting upset in the first round of the playoffs, the Choker King finally collected the championship that had so long eluded him. The White Buffalo made the playoffs for the first time since his championship-winning year in 1996, so he’s hoping it won’t be another eight years between postseason appearances. I bounced back from a bottom-dwelling 2002 but failed to make the playoffs for the third straight year myself.

As for the real league, I’ll confine myself to considering the NFC North today. The Packers are, as always, dependent upon Brett Favre, who can beat anyone except the Vikings. The Vikings have added some solid defensive players to go with the league’s top offense, but as always, the question is if the coaching staff can get them to beat the weak sisters. They would have won the division easily if not for choking against the Giants, Chargers, Raiders and -erk- Cardinals. People are getting way too excited about the Lions – remember, Matt Millen is still running that ongoing train wreck from Pennsylvania – and if they improve by more than two games, I’ll be shocked. The Bears won’t be as bad as last year now that Mr. Interception is history. What they were thinking, I’ll never know. As Big Chilly said: “when even your effeminate, got-to-be-gay waiter in San Francisco is wondering what the Hell is wrong with the Bears GM, you’ve got to figure it’s going to get ugly.”

Prediction for the NFC North: Vikings, Packers, Bears, Lions

I don’t usually make this sort of email public, but I’m doing so for three reasons. First, MM is a semi-regular here, so I thought some of the regulars might be interested in his opinion and the topic wasn’t likely to come up for comments since I don’t often post on it. Second, he’s not a Christian, and I am always interested in learning how non-Christians view the books. And third, I’m ordering the books this week, so if you’d like to place an order with Digital Cowboy, please feel free to wander over to voxday.net and do so.

I post semi-regularly on your blog. But I just got done reading “The War In Heaven” and I want to congratulate and thank you for writing it. I’m unsaved, but it touched me. I like the warrior aspect of Jesus quite a bit. Your portrayal reminded me of (I think) Jefferson’s quote “I tremble when I think the Lord is just.” Christopher came off as quite the bastard. I’m looking forward to seeing how you deal with him in the later books….

I also think it’s a shame that your book was put only in the Christian section. I love the integration of fantasy into a Christian novel and think it should be done more often. I haven’t read any other Christian fiction, but I’m put off from reading it as I’m worried it may be too preachy and clean to be entertaining. Like you said elsewhere, the events don’t have to be lily-white to be a Christian work, just written from the viewpoint that Christ is real and should be portrayed as the Savior. I think Hollywood should exploit this. They could do some great things with a screenwriter working with a POV similar to yours. But I won’t hold my breath.

I will certainly recommend this novel to anyone that will listen and I wish you great success with the third installment.

I’ll be interested to see how the third one does too. It’s definitely not like any other book of its type.

In case you’re wondering why I’m not commenting on this, that’s easy. I haven’t watched a moment of it. There’s no need to. Political conventions aren’t interesting, unless you’re there, and even then it’s basically like a crowded frat party except the drinks are of a higher quality, as are the women. At a Republican convention, anyhow.

I did think that the gang over at NRO was doing their usual bloviating about the speechifying. I like their stuff, except for the fact that they will inevitable say that George Bush “hit it out of the park” every time he steps behind a microphone, which is ludicrous as he is the worst public speaker I’ve ever seen as President. Even his father had a certain patrician elegance to his tortured elocution that the current President lacks.

Kerry’s pretty bad on the stump too. What a nightmare it would be, to feature a Lincoln-Douglas style debate between the two of them. Of course, since their disagreements tend to be matters of degree instead of substance, they wouldn’t even have much to debate. I’d sure like to see one of them forced to take on either Peroutka or Badnarik, but that isn’t going to happen, at least not this election cycle. C’est la vie.