conservatism

AFTER A WEEK of confusion, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott held a press conference Friday in an attempt to clarify his position on segregation. "Segregation is a stain on our nation's soul," said Lott. "Let me be clear: Segregation and racism are immoral."

Stop for a moment and think about that. Almost half a century after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v.

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Speaking as one who has abandoned the left screaming in panic, David Skinner has hit the nail on the head with his article ("No More Idealism on the Left"). The Left has lost its sense of purpose, its reason for being, and just generally, its sense and reason.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

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In his article Bond Forever, Jonathan V. Last writes that part of the secret of James Bond's success was his accent. He states, "If an American were to tell a girl, 'I hope my big end can stand up to this!' he'd be a troglodyte.

HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED, Texas politics has seen a large (as befits Texas) number of flamboyant personalities. Lyndon Baines Johnson, for one. Mark it down: Sen.-elect John Cornyn, a man not given to fancy speeches or grand gestures, isn't among them.

In remarks to supporters on election night, the soft-spoken former judge interpreted the returns in his race as a vote not about himself or even his politics but about "the management of the U.S. Senate." Texas voters, he said, wanted a Republican Senate.

HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER Dick Armey has become all the things people like about politicians but seldom get. He's candid, even downright revealing. He admits mistakes. He's forthright about the lessons he's learned in Washington after 18 years as a House member from Texas. He's clear about what he got done (welfare reform) and what he didn't (Social Security reform). And he's fun to listen to. Too bad he's retiring after 9 terms and clearing out of town.

Armey is part of a troika of influential conservative Republicans who are leaving Congress at the end of the year.

TUESDAY NIGHT, the Texas GOP delivered for former governor George W. Bush--in grand fashion. Besides holding the governor's mansion and the Senate seat vacated by retiring senator Phil Gramm, the party refused to concede any statewide office to a Democrat, leaving the Democrats' representation at the highest levels of Texas government at zero.

Republicans didn't just beat their opponents; they pummeled them. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Governor Rick Perry and U.S. senator-elect John Cornyn led their opponents Tony Sanchez and Ron Kirk by 18 and 12 points, respectively.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

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I have been frustrated by the great American toaster for several years (Larry Miller, You Gotta Have a Toaster, Right?). I have taken the cheap toaster route, I have taken the expensive toaster route. None of them last for more than six months. The great American toaster no longer exists.

James Burnham and the Struggle for the World
A Life
by Daniel Kelly
ISI, 443 pp., $29.95

Principles and Heresies
Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement
by Kevin J. Smant
ISI, 390 pp., $29.95

BACK IN 1994, in a much-discussed essay in the American Historical Review, Columbia University's Alan Brinkley insisted that historians' preference for liberal and progressive interpretations had caused them to neglect the phenomenon of American conservatism. In the years since, several important books have studied the political success of conservatism.

IN YESTERDAY'S Washington Times, Jennifer Harper reported that, since December 7, 1941, 200 books have been written about Pearl Harbor. And since September 11, 2001, 400 books have been written about the attacks on that terrible day.

WEDNESDAY'S New York Times carried a front-page article by Neil A. Lewis headlined "Ashcroft's Terrorism Policies Dismay Some Conservatives." Lewis asserts that Attorney General John Ashcroft is becoming unpopular with religious conservatives who fear that their organizations may be investigated under new anti-terror legislation.

THE BRITS, so valuable for so many reasons, understand a great many truths, one of which is this: Everyone has their place in the world. Alas, the place of conservatives is standing athwart history and yelling stop until, Wile E. Coyote-style, history runs them down, hurtles onward towards the horizon, and leaves them a laughingstock.

Conservatives have lost almost every intellectual fight since Caesar and Brutus took it outside, but what most normal people--and nearly all liberals--don't realize is that the world needs conservatives.

IT MUST BE MISERABLE to be on the Democratic left. For decades you've been inveighing against the evils of corporate power. For decades you've been waiting for a popular backlash against concentrated wealth, one that would finally provide momentum for the liberal economic policies you've been championing all along--for redistribution, for tighter regulations on business, for bigger and more active government.

And then suddenly, the moment comes! Almost everyone acknowledges that income inequality is on the rise. The rich are getting richer.