Just watched the debate between Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron, the three major contenders for the prime ministership of Great Britain. Going into it, I figured I'd like what Cameron had to say -- and I did. However, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and head of that party's "market" wing, really charmed me. I know he's more left of center than he came off, but it was interesting to see someone making the case for semi-classical liberalism. I was especially intrigued by his emphasis on regionalism, decentralization, trade and peaceful intercourse abroad, and the fusion of civil rights and strong policing at home. Also, he eagerly shot down Labour's idiotic and fearsome National ID Card program. He was also a real stickler for hard numbers.

No surprise Clegg has zoomed ahead in the polls.

Closer to upset than we think?

Three years ago, the Republican establishment piled scorn on the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul.

Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling.

His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP's handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders -- all statewide officeholders.

What happened?

A young Ron Paul in really excellent form on fiat money.

RE: The last post

How many of the GOP's lower middle class big guvmint howlers actually benefit from the oppressive federal levy? You are forced to wonder.

Reminds me tangentially of this interesting imbalance, indicated on the left-side map.

People wonder why there is no tax revolt?

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

...

In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

...

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

A wealthy young Republican donor and former member of the "Young Eagles" -- a program that is supposed to make the GOP fun again, or something -- said in reaction to Bondagegate:

Everything that's cool from a pop culture perspective is Democratic, whether it's Kanye West or Bruce Springsteen . . .

I'm reminded suddenly of Freddie's recent Wunderkammer article:

To call the Burkean insight a project or mission would be, I suppose, exactly wrong. But however we might want to frame it, it is clear that Burkeanism has failed utterly to maintain a hold on the communal imagination of movement conservatism. Convinced of the necessity of imprinting the conservative brand onto even the most elementary of human experiences, conservatives have come to look for ideological status (and thus ideological battle) in the narrowest crevices of day-to-day life. This has led to the sprawling industry of providing "conservative alternatives," in the realm of commodities or media, to conservative people. It is now entirely easy for someone to consume only conservative-oriented media at every level: conservative magazines, conservative radio, conservative television and news, conservative websites. Broader still, there are conservative dating services, conservative coffee houses, conservative colleges, conservative financial services, conservative rock music, a conservative YouTube....Often explicit, always obvious, these conservative-situated alternatives send the inescapable message: there is no end to the political; all of human life is a part of an endless ideological struggle; nothing is to be considered free from the quest for conservative purity.

I can't even imagine considering Kanye West in political terms, yet those on the mainstream right seem more and more committed to viewing everything through the crude filter of ideology. Think of how often you hear conservatives lament "art for art's sake," just like the old time reds. The vulgarization of conservatism is intimately related to conservatives' vulgarization of life itself; to their pathetic inability to distinguish and appreciate the various modes of human existence.

Random, and rough, thought during work today: Liberals recognize that Americans are a non-martial people*, but they do not understand the martial reality of our imperial commitment. Conservatives** do not recognize that Americans are a non-martial people, but they better understand the martial reality of our imperial commitment.

*We verged, after two major world wars and a decade of hunger and poverty, on becoming a martial people, but the cultural revolt of the '60s and '70s (which crossed generational, class, and sex lines) not only ended but reversed the process.

**Here I mean conservatives of the mainstream, not antiwar.com readers/Buchananites/paleos, and so on.