Here:

As to the elections: the Republicans did not deserve to win. I do not believe the Democrats have earned the right to rule, and the very close election seems to bear that out: there's no mandate here. The Republicans abandoned Reagan and his principles, and reverted to the typical Optimate attitudes of the Country Club oligarchs. They went on a spending spree to reward themselves for their labors in opposition, loosed a flood of earmarks, raised discretionary spending to new heights much of it for projects that make no sense, and made war on Federalism and states' rights. Far from leaving things to the states, they decided to interfere.

Having abandoned fiscal conservatism and what I would call the conservative principles of the people I would have called conservative, they embraced the Trotskyite idealism of the neoconservatives. Trotskyite is a modern name for good old fashioned Jacobinism. Jacobins don't really want "the people" to rule, of course; they are sure they know better what the people want than the people do, and if the people don't realize that, why Rousseau himself told us that sometimes people must be forced to be free.

They also turned to what they call social conservatism, completely misunderstanding what the vast majority of the "social conservatives" want, which is to be left alone to enjoy life in the ways they have done so for a long time. That may well include display of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and Mangers (and Menorahs) in the public squares; and "censorship" in the sense of having some control over what is openly displayed for sale on public newsstands and in book store windows. What the news stand operators sell in the back room, and what book stores have on their shelves is of less concern; and what book stores and newsstands sell twenty miles away is of almost no concern at all.

The main practical difference between libertarians and conservatives on most matters of personal freedom are over the power to be given to local authorities. We can all pretty much agree on matters where the Federal government ought to mind its own business and simply stay out. There may be a number of "social conservatives" who would like to "reform" San Francisco, but all of the ones I know don't give a hang what Sister Boom Boom and the Order of Perpetual Indulgence do up there, so long as we have some control of what goes on in Studio City, or Resume Speed, Michigan, or Cedar Rapids, Iowa (depending on where we live). The notion that abandoning every conservative principle including the most important ones of fiscal responsibility and subsidiarity can be made up for by some fair words on defense of marriage and pre-natal stem cell research was absurd on the face of it, and the election pretty well proved it. The Old Conservatives may or may not have voted, but they sure didn't put much effort into turning out the vote; and the Republicans lost seats all over including in what they thought was their heartland. And they didn't lose by much: a bit more motivation among those who preferred Republican principles to whatever programs the Democrat coalitions can agree on would have reversed the results.

We can hope the Optimates learned something from that, but I doubt they did. The day Bush First took office he turned out every Reagan supporter he could find (except for Dan Quayle, whom he couldn't dismiss). His son was not quite so thorough, but easily confused neoconservative Jacobins for real conservatism. So it goes.

Since neither party seems interested in smaller Federal government and reliance on efficient and cheap self-government, I find it wearying to pay attention to politics. But, as Pericles warned his people, just because you take no interest in government does not mean that government will take no interest in you. We need to remember that.