I’m sitting here icing my flab, having just returned from a most EXCELLENT time exercising my 2nd Amendment rights with some of my favorite mad libertarian and conservative running dogs, and I wish to pronounce that the heart of Conservatism is all about guns.

No? Oh well.

Is Dreher asking some good questions? He may well be. But my point simply is tone matters. Tone always matters. Tone can ruin the best questions and elevate dreck. Perhaps this is not how it should be, but it is how it is.

I work with some impassioned social conservatives, who are very upset about the state of the world. They want it to change, and they write all sorts of things to this effect. But in their op-eds and whatnot they don’t persuade. They bludgeon. And somehow this makes them not very persuasive.

The Ombudsman will be the first to tell you that tact is not one of my gifts. I fully embrace that there is a time and place for bludgeoning, but not every time and place is for bludgeoning, and it seems to me that the Crunchy Cons would do well to remember that.

Also Dr. P has a point: this is all possibly less interesting than Battlestar Galactica, which you have to admit is a frightening thought.

Meanwhile back here in Bobo Paradise, I offer this gem of an article from Thursday’s WaPo.

Also far more interesting to me than the Crunchy book is this one. I intend to give it a whirl after I finish with Flashman on the March.