If you don't live in Ohio, don't read this

I'm voting for Kasich in the Buckeye State. And if you live here, you should to. Strategy is everything. Excerpt:

"I'm just stating the obvious," Conant argued. "If you are a Republican primary voter in Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is John Kasich, because John Kasich is the sitting governor, he's very close to Donald Trump in some of the polls there."

Rubio later echoed those comments himself at a news conference in West Palm Beach, FL.

"Clearly, John Kasich has a better chance of winning Ohio than I do, and if a voter concludes that voting for John Kasich is our best chance of stopping Donald Trump, that's what they'll do," Rubio said.

Carson Holloway on the Benedict Option

Catholics are practical people, even though we have some strange beliefs and practices. Carson Holloway provides practical advice about the Benedict Option and how the special snowflakes who live in the Benedict Option compounds will have to be protected from the wolves in our society even as the Hobbits in Tolkien's Shire were protected by his Dúnedain. Excerpt:

At the same time, I don’t see how, realistically, the Benedict option can be an option that excludes political activism for American Catholics. That activism will have to continue, for a couple of reasons.

First, Catholics will have to do what they can to help the larger society as long as they seem to have any chance of success. To take the most obvious example, Catholics cannot responsibly withdraw from politics while there is still some chance of effecting change with regard to abortion. If abortion kills innocent human beings, then Catholic cannot just shrug it off and walk away from the grubby business of politics. They will have to stay involved.

Second, I suspect that political activism will be necessary in defense of the Benedict option. Successfully living the Benedict option requires that the larger culture will leave you alone to do so. There are fairly powerful forces in the culture that would be happy to leave Catholics alone to do so. But there are also fairly powerful forces–forces of fanaticism–that won’t want to leave Catholics alone to live their lives according to their own standards. So the freedom to live the Benedict option is attainable but also in danger.

Accordingly, the Catholic enclaves will have to be defended by Catholic lawyers and political activists.

This all stands to reason for anyone who understands the history or the world and the nature of evil, which are of course inexorably linked. Some Catholics will have to opt to be sheep dogs to use Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's analogy, an analogy recently popularized by the American Sniper book and movie. These people will not have the luxury of Benedict Option-ing.

I am planning to write more extensively on just how closely the Grossman/Kyle sheepdog analogy matches Tolkien's view of goodness, evil and just warfare in his Middle Earth, mainly because it is amazing to me how many Catholics who claim to know Tolkien's philosophy on these matters utterly misunderstand it. This was evidenced in spades during the Facebook conversation I recently mentioned. But I just want to conclude now by pointing out that if things are bad enough to describe them in apocalyptic language, then how can the planned withdrawal to little enclaves and platoons be anything which can be described as strategic when you are basically broadcasting this intention where your enemy can hear you loud and clear? Or, well, maybe I'm not being invited to all the clandestine planning meetings where they discuss secret tunnel entrances, etc. That's probably it.

Some prudence, please.

You can be "too prudent" in politics, I suppose, and end up as a mushy moderate afraid to offend anyone. But the Conservative Daily people don't have that problem. I had started getting their emails about half a year ago even though I hadn't signed up for them. As a conservative, I agree with most of what they believe in. Their main action item, however, is strategic nonsense, namely the impeachment of Barack Obama. Check that search link; it's pretty much a topic in every email they send me, and I suppose they are proud that they don't let weak-kneed cowards like me talk them into pushing for more reasonable goals such as electing conservatives like Mia Love or fighting Obamacare like the good people at Health Care Compact.

But here's my question. What happens in the off-chance that they succeed at impeachment of President Obama? Basically they would have spent a large amount of political capital to purchase (drum roll...) President Joseph Biden! It would be a slight variation on Marvel's HYDRA villain myth: "cut off one head and three-eighths of a head shall take its place." I also can imagine a cheesy K-tel announcer's voice: "But wait... that's not all. You will also receive a complimentary Vice President Hillary Clinton free of charge!" Yep--all teed up for her 2016 run.

Of course I think that these sort of groups are really just collecting money for vanity causes which they know won't succeed. And they are only one of the groups from which I get crazy emails. It does irritate me that they probably bought my email from a more legitimate source, but I don't want to restrict their freedom of speech or the ability of both mailing list buyers and sellers to engage in commerce. That's why I've posted my thoughts on Conservative Daily here, along with a general warning based on Churchill's wisdom concerning strategy and results. I've become very wary of posers and shysters in the world of the "tea party" and conservatism at large; of course I'm not the first nor the smartest to notice. My other action was to unsubscribe from their emails.