One More Epicycle

The quote is usually attributed to Otto von Bismarck, though it has the hallmarks of being apocryphal.  Lots of variants, some pithier than others; assignments to other famous people; all the usual signs.

Still, the reason it’s survived is because it captures a profound truth: “A special Providence protects fools, drunkards, small children, and the United States of America.”

The workings of such providence aren’t always easy to understand.

In this election there were no conservatives running, merely an idiosyncratic but admirable maverick and the most liberal member of the the US Senate.  Not theology but natural law suggests that isn’t going to end well.

The more so because of the bizarre cult surrounding Obama.

The human impulse to be religious is universal, though it varies in strength, and is independent of belief in the supernatural.  Many so-called “nonreligious” people have trouble recognizing this and therefore misunderstand their own actions.  For my part I think of “religiousness” as the degree to which you incorporate your view of your activities into a larger story of cosmic significance.  People who don’t accept the supernatural but who still were born pretty high on the “religiousness” scale wind up separating their papers from their plastics with impressive if misguided devotion, and complaining about people who don’t, independent of actual calculations of the energy budget of the process but because they believe it’s helping save the Earth.  They simply transfer their worship elsewhere.

Broadly speaking, liberalism is secular and conservatism is religious; this isn’t because of any greatness or holiness of conservatives, but because the Right’s philosophy — being necessarily tragic and constrained (in Tom Sowell’s “Clash of Visions” sense) — leaves space for the divine in a way that the closed and self-contained unconstrained vision of the Left doesn’t.  When man is silent, God will speak.

Which means, in short, that I don’t need to vote for a Messiah. I already have one.  Investing such dreams in any man for me would be blasphemy.  I understand they call it hope.

Those who seek salvation — even purely secular salvation — in politics are doomed to disappointment, and I’m a little worried about what will happen when the absurdly unrealistic expectations of many of Obama’s followers aren’t met.  Given the opportunity for painful self-criticism or for doublethink and accusations of conspiracy by the wreckers, most of us have a preference.

The next few years are going to be interesting ones, in the ancient curse sense of interesting.  The many blessings God has given the Americans don’t include freedom from consequence.

Foreigner that I am, my greatest concerns at the moment aren’t for the Americans, who always seem to muddle through, but for the Israelis, who will lose their greatest friend ever to hold the office for a man with decidedly moral-equivalence tendencies — and in a world where they’re so hated, that’s a considerable problem — and the Iraqis, as Obama may find it politically difficult to respond to changes in the situation if things take a turn for the worse.  Obama could suddenly reveal such courage, of course, but it would be somewhat unprecedented, to put it charitably.

Senator McCain once said, regarding Iraq, that he would rather lose an election than lose the war.  He has done the first, but his lonely support of the surge — his keeping his head when all about were losing theirs — may have prevented the latter.  I’ve always found it difficult to forget his terrible “campaign finance reform” (read: “Incumbent Protection Act”) which made hash of the First Amendment, but I will never forget his unwillingness to lose a nation to terror and hatred when it didn’t have to happen.

Congratulations to President-elect Obama, and — especially? — to Senator McCain.  May God continue to watch over the Americans, and shower them with mercies as He has done for centuries.

I had a dryly witty conclusion in mind for this point, with just the right helping of sophisticated and detached cynicism, but: No.

God bless America, and the Americans.