With It Takes a Family, Rick Santorum has served notice. The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left, but from the Right.

Terms like "left" and "right" become meaningless after a point, but Rauch's take is that replacing the individual with the family as the basic unit of society is an invitation to governmental growth, and that Santorum is drastically revising—perhaps even reversing—the Goldwater-Reagan formula.

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I'm at the Ronald Reagan Awards Banquet. In a separate entry I will list the winners of the various NFRA Awards. Soon, there will be a showing of In the Face of Evil, the documentary about Ronald Reagan's fight against communism, and how it bears on the current terrrorist threat. Of course, I've already seen it, at the Liberty Film Festival last fall, where as I recall it was the world premiere.

At the moment, Tom Tancredo is speaking, and giving an eloquent argument against illegal immigration—an issue that most of you know I've been vascillating on for some time. (Why? Because part of the whole issue has to do with how the economies in our border states are going to conduct their business without the labor normally provided by "illegals," so the "seal off the borders and everything will be lovely" people [those who oversimplify the practicalities of the process] bother me. But the security issues tied into this are sobering, and a good place to start.)

Tancredo discusses the fact that some misguided teachers in schools with a lot of immigrants teach a cartoonish version of multiculturalism, encouraging high school and junior high school students to identify with their native lands rather than this country.

"I don't care whaere you come from," he says. "All I ask is that once you get here, you do what most of our grandparents did, and become part of this nation."

He gets a standing ovation.

And I have a lot to think about.

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Dr. Judith Reisman is speaking on the counter-assault against Alfred Kinsey and his research, for which she has led the charge.

Her thesis is that Kinsey's research is based on outrageous sampling errors, and that some of his claims about the sexuality of the "greatest generation" reflected some of the claims made by Nazis in propaganda distributed to British and American troops.

One of the most egregious aspects of Kinsey's research, of course, was his promotion of the notion that young children were sexual in a way that excused adult-child sex.

There's more. I'll definitely have to read Dr. Reisman's latest book, Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences and review it herein.

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The official slogan for this year's NFRA convention is "turning up the heat on the left." Get it? We're in Scottsdale, Arizona, toward the end of the hot days of summer. This is a glorious part of the country, though: the physical beauty here is astounding.

Mike Spence, introducing Bob Barr as the keynote speaker, modifies the slogan, making the point that what NFRA really needs to do is to "turn up the heat on the GOP."

Bob Barr is speaking on the inadequacy of passively depending on the two-party system to represent the people. He makes a number of truly excellent points, one of which hit me right over the head: Republicans continually preach to African-Americans about the need to objectively evaluate what the Democratic Party is (and, more usually, is not) doing for them. True conservatives need, he tells us, so "practice what they preach.

Rep Barr also analyzed Ronald Reagan's presidency, pointing out that he was an outsider at the beginning of his first term, and remained an outsider until he left office.

Rep Barrr is an amazing thinker, attempting to raise the level of debate about all issues, and explaining that the important thing is to talk about substance, rather than to go along with the prevailing wisdom. Make sure to talk reasonably with people whom you disagree with, he exhorts us: you may have an opportunity to carry an important message.

He defends his relationship with the ACLU, pointing out that despite the many areas of disagreement between his own positions and those of that group, there are important discussions to be had about some provisions of the Patriot Act, and we'd be derelict to gloss them over.

In conclusion, he reminds us that "expediency is for cowards. Principles are for winners."

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I had a wonderful discussion at the Goldwater reception with Greg Parke about his campaign against Sanders in one of the most interesting states in the union: from where I sit Vermont appears, like Southern California, to be an area of libertarian principles that have become so watered-down as to turn the entire state a sort of pale blue hue.

And yet, Vermont has an extraordinary commitment to the Second Amendment, and awash in firearms, which can be carried by anyone. There are those, of course, who maintain that Vermont is adversely affected by people from the northeastern metropolises, who live there only part-time—but vote "full-time" in Vermont as well as their home states. This theory holds that the full-timers—"real Vermonters"—aren't big nanny staters. I'm not so sure, but I'd like some sort of national resolution on this issue, since plenty of New Yorkers declared openly in 2004 that they intended to vote in their home states and the state that contained their vacation properties. (After all, Florida was a big swing state, and the end justified the means.)

Whatever the situation, Vermonters need to consider whether they were well-served by Jim Jeffords, and want to repeat the "Democrat-in-independent clothing" mistake.

Parke is a personable man with a passion for this country that is underscored by his two decades in the USAF. He cares about the people of Vermont, and wants to educate New Englanders about the true consequences of statism. He and I and another charming Air Force man from a blue state (Massachusetts) talk about how insidious the liberal argument is, and how willing people seem to be to give up liberty for the illusion of safety. We've all had these arguments with our liberal friends, and all experienced that exquisitely frustrating "Ben Franklin" moment in which we declare they deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Do we mean it? Well, probably not. But the whole thing is an uphill battle.

If you're in New England, spread the word about Lt. Colonel Parke. If you're in Vermont, remember to vote, and consider helping out with the campaign.

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I'm live-blogging the Goldwater reception at the NFRA, where Glorious Johnson is speaking in favor of drafting Condi Rice for the presidency, an idea that some in the room seem skeptical about as she begins her remarks. Johnson's speech is taking the shape of a history lesson, explaining the relationship between the black population in this country&mdashblack women in particular—and the GOP.

Did you know that Sojourner Truth was a Republican? Did you know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican? Rest assured that the ladies Councilwoman Johnson spoke of were all represented in my high school women's history class, and they include my all-time favorite black female historical figure, Harriet Tubman, who rescued more slaves than anyone else in American history, and carried a gun as a conductor on the "Underground Railroad." Councilwoman Johnson notes that Tubman was also a soldier, a spy, and a nurse in the Civil War. Johnson furthermore mentions Ida B. Wells, Mary Terrell, and Mary McLeod Bethune as historical figures with ties to the GOP.

Dr. Rice is ready, Johnson assures us, ridiculing the often-repeated notion that Rice needs to go to Alabama or California to run for some small office before she can represent this country in the White House. (What we have in Condi Rice, as Dr. Mason of AFR constantly reminds us, is a candidate who has virtually served an apprenticeship for the highest office in the land.)

Johnson's speaking style is very dynamic, in the gospel-influenced cadence of many African-American orators from the South, and she dominates the room—not an easy task while there's a bar and a buffet in the back. A lot of the NFRA delegates haven't seen each other for a long time, and they are dying to get re-acquainted: Johnson reminds them of the important task facing this party over the next two years in picking the leader of the free world. Her voices carries, and her message resonates. Despite themselves, the socializers in the back are carried up in the excitement, and begin chanting "Condi!" under the councilwoman's direction until the whole room is united.

Johnson is, she tells us, on a mission. It's a mission shared by many others. Most of the people working on this campaign have had a sort of "Eureka!" moment in which they take the idea seriously for a minute or two, and then the light breaks as they realize that Dr. Rice is uniquely positioned to carry on the aspects of the President's legacy that are working well, and to improve on the areas where it isn't.

There's usually a moment in which they consider who can best stand up to Hillary Clinton in a Presidential debate, and then a smile begins to play on their lips. And then they kind of exhale and admit that "there might be something to this. Perhaps she isn't just a fantasy candidate after all."

Get out your surfboard, and ride this wave. Because it's coming at you soon.

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it's Little Miss Attila! I'll be here all weekend, blogging the NFRA Convention. This is the organization that Ronald Reagan called "the conscience of the Republican party," and it's an important voice (or rather, an important set of voices) within the conservative movement.

Ironically, WiFi is easier to access here than it is from my hotel room a few miles down Scottsdale Road at the Holiday Inn. If I'm not successful at logging in from there tonight or tomorrow, it's all over between me and the Holiday Inn. I thought it was True Love (plus, with my Auto Club discount, it was $15 cheaper there than it would have been to stay here at the Chaparral Suites), but the WiFi here is better, and I may just return all the jewelry and lingerie Holiday Inn has given me and leave them for good this time.

I mean it. Do you hear me, Holiday Inn Express? I even joined your little business travellers' club and everything. I feel so used.

There's a sense of excitement here as the various groups set up their booths and begin setting out their literature. The John Birch Society has a table here, as do the Stop the FTAA activists. And, of course, Team Condi.

I'll try to resist the temptation to make up a series of fake off-hours "adventures" to regale you with, in the manner of Goldstein's RNC convention blogging. But I won't make any promises, other than to say I really am here at the convention site, and it's pretty thrilling, to tell you the truth.

The Goldwater Reception begins in less than three hours, so at some point I do have to hop back to my hotel and put my suit on. Councilwoman Glorious Johnson of Jacksonville, Florida is speaking on behalf of Americans for Rice and the National Black Republican Convention, and I don't want to miss that.

If you're trying to get through by e-mail, rest assured that I shall get your missives at some point, from one of the two hotels. But you might want to send a carrier pigeon into the desert as a backup.

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1 But how would we know if they were real or fake? At least with Goldstein we had a track record sufficient to give pause as to the veracity of the reported adventures. But...wait. Since we *would* be more inclined to believe them, that would make them all the more juicy to read. Please do regale!

Posted by: Desert Cat at September 02, 2005 09:01 PM (xdX36)

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