The Rove Divorce

I do believe Karl Rove would consider being called a prick a compliment.

Deep down inside, Rove has to know what he actually is and just being a prick is much better than he has managed to attain.

Why did you think that? Seriously, why? If I wrote, "I thought conservatives were "anti-individual," "moral puritanism," "kill and let kill," "accept no life-styles but their own," would you take my beliefs seriously? Then why should we accord yours any respect.

Whether or not Rove is knowledgeable about electoral patterns and strategy has nothing to do with his personal morality and hypocrisy (or not) regarding marriage. What we do know is that a proponent of the sanctity of marriage, something conservatives once believed included opposing divorce, has had two failed marriages. Obviously, his personal life is his own, but if he's going to sit in judgment on the personal lives of others, including whether its justified to allow couples who've remained together longer than he's managed to do (with two tries), then he can't object if others sit in judgment on him. You yourself are free to argue that Rove's marriage(s) shouldn't be judged, and I hope you'd offer that same liberal outlook on gay marriages and civil unions.

Rove, of course, isn't at all concerned with judicial activism, and I'm quite certain that you aren't either. When courts decide to overturn state rules on affirmative action, minority districts, or medical marijuana (all of which conservative judges have done), Rove has been conspicously silent about such activism.

As far as I know, the earliest written records don't talk about marriage, not in the sense you're thinking of. Records from about a thousand years later talk about marriage contracts, mainly in terms of property. They weren't all that concerned with what you're calling "the family unit" and it's not clear what you mean by "its functionality." Family registers in China, or course, were very concerned with a family unit -- the household -- but not at all with marriage. There's the objective homework you failed to do.

The religious sanction for marriage that you're familiar with is a medieval European invention, one that legitimates procreation (and thus rendered many children legally illegitimate). The early years of northern European settlement in North America included a specific decision to separate weddings from religious sanction. There's some more homework.

Look, Rove is a buffoon and a hypocrit. That is perhaps not unusual at the higher levels of national politics, but it's not anything you ought to be wasting your time defending.

It's striking that the pro-family values party has no problem with this, just as the anti-government spending crowd was so quiet during the past eight years of run-away government spending . . . often pushed by those who are so loudly opposing spending now. The conservative wing of the GOP seems to have no problem with divorced men setting the political agenda or running for President, evangelicals vote to elect (and re-elect) men who don't have any interest in attending church or behaving in a Christian manner, and pro-military conservatives keep voting against democratic candidates with substantial military service, and don't see any of this as inconsistent. One might think that supporting multiple divorcees and serial adulterers would in fact make you one of those "'do your own thing' 'moral relativism' 'live and let live' 'accept all life-styles' kind of people" you seem to object to.

But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs. Even though the group you think you oppose is largely a product of your imagination, go right on tarring liberals, progressives, and democrats in general for traits that are more common among the people you support, go right on believing that the current president is somehow a socialist and a fascist, and don't be alarmed when people laugh at your hypocrisy. They're just elitists, or something. Yeah, that's the ticket.