The American Spectator

Carlos Echevarria| 12.1.08 @ 7:27AM

Great article and thank you for putting everything into proper perspective...God Bless you!!!

Just one last thing, respectfully, we did get, in my humble opinion, one positive out of the McCain run and that is the new standard bearer of the GOP, Sarah Louise Heath Palin. (Reagan in heels)

Bob| 12.1.08 @ 8:16AM

The irony here is that Obama was perceived as the candidate of hope and redemption. McCain/Palin ran a nasty, negative campaign with lots of name calling and separatism. Obama understood the need to "bring people together", while Palin, especially, was extremely divisive and negative.

This is a function of the dumbing down of Republicans in general and conservatives specifically. Perhaps if we elected smart, competent, knowledgeable candidates we'd have a chance. I believe this has less to do with positions and more to do with the competence and brilliance of the candidate.

Mary| 12.1.08 @ 9:32AM

Thank you, Mr. Hillyer.

I suffered a terrible crisis of faith a couple of years ago that was so painful, and I shed tears I never dreamed I could or would.

I'm not fully back, and maybe I never will be, but what the Church gave me I can never repay. And what the Church gave the world, the world can never repay.

Someone commented recently that Obama sought "christian justice." Christian was written in lower case to give it the sacrosanctity of the secular. But you cannot take The Law of Christ out of Christian justice because once you do it becomes a foundation of sand. The Church accomplished all it accomplished because it believed in the concrete, existential Jesus and not the abstraction.

Please read this, Mr. Hillyer: http://tinyurl.com/5eygbo

And let us pray that America does not go the way of England.

My family didn't start to celebrate Christmas in the American style until I was about 10 years old. It wasn't the custom in Italy to exchange gifts. We had a repast of fish on Christmas Eve -keeping the Fast, and Christmas Day was about family and the Holy Family and memories. We were alone. All my relatives were in Italy. I came to know my maternal grandmother in 1968. I spent the summer in Italy. I was 12, and I never saw her again.

We had so very little, but it was enough and it was the happiest time for my family. As we progressed and we acquired more, the happiness was no greater.

God bless you and keep you and your family.

Adeste Fideles!

Daphne Kenward| 12.1.08 @ 10:02AM

Mary.

If you refuse to learn, you will suffer, if you think Christmas is more than a Pagan fistival look it up. Begin to learn stop being the follower but the leader in common sense and justice.

Teach your family to save their money, and do not go around wasting it because one day you will need it and bad credit will not help you.

There is no where in the Bible telling anyone to run up huge debts because it's the 25th of December. The only people who benefit from these stupid ideas are retailers, they make huge profits while people rack up debts. And the Banks make a killing on interest payments on credit cards and loans and over drafts.

Darling wake up grow up and teach your children to be responsible. Dump Christmas.

SANTA, mix up the words this is what you get SATAN.

Gazinya| 12.1.08 @ 10:18AM

Thank you Mr. Hillyer. It is fasinating watching the world getting 'ramped up' for something. I remember a time when all seemed dark and I read Psalm 37 and I learned something that has helped me throughout my life. There seems to be three time tables. One is the worlds' time. Things that should have been yesterday. Then there is my time. Things I want done, NOW. Then there is Gods' time and Gods' time is 'in the nick of time.'

Daphne Kenward| 12.1.08 @ 10:37AM

Anybody out there ever read this.

One night I had a dream, I dreamt I was walking along the beach with god, and across the sky flashed scenes from my life.

For each scene I noticed two sets of foot prints in the sand, one belonged to me and the other to god.

When the last scene of my life flashed before us I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at times along the path of life there was only one set of footprints.

I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of my life. This really bothered me and I questioned God about it.

"God, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk with me all the way, but I noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is only one set of footprints.

I don't understand why, in times when I needed you most, you would leave me.

God replied, my precious, precious child, I loved you and I would never, never, leave you during times of trials and suffering.

When you see only one set of footprints it was then that I carried you.

Alan Brooks| 12.1.08 @ 3:39PM

We lost Buckley this year. That means were in for conservatives who aren't grounded in decency. Mercenaries.
mercenary
quite contrary
how does your garden grow?

Diane Smith| 12.2.08 @ 1:21AM

Quin Hillyer states Mc Cain ran an inept campaign. He did. My question is: who among the aspiring would-be nominees would have run an "ept" one?

Mitt Romney, whose most telling statement sticks in my mind, "Don't touch the hair." in speaking of his perfect coif?

Fred Thompson, who seemed to have mistaken the whole thing for a run-through?

Rudy Giuliani interrupting a speaking engagement to take a cell phone call from his silly wife? Silly wife persuading Rudy to pose in the Big Smooch for Vanity Fair? Did Al Gore devouring Tipper at the convention teach him nothing?

Huckabee, the thin fat guy preacher man from Arkansas who fakes it even at guitar - -

If any other Republican in the field could have run a better campaign, why was he not the nominee? This is not a defense of Mc Cain, but rather a question that lingers in the mind - after the Republican clock was pretty thoroughly cleaned.

It is easy to blame it all on George Bush, but that is a sleazy cop-out and sadly, a part of the Republican mentality these days. The truth is(and was), we are a party without a viable candidate against the slick invention of David Axelrod. You hear the occasional faint boast of someone claiming to be Reaganesque. Only Reagan was Reaganesque. No one before him and certainly no one since. What Reagan had going for him, in addition to his happy-go-lucky smile, that no one else has captured, was he knew what the country needed. Not what he needed. He didn't need to be president to feel fulfilled. He had a genuine desire to serve his country. Most have a genuine desire to have the trappings and power of the presidency. And that is what we have now. Interesting that our new president has chosen as his props those who propped up Bill Clinton in his hour of need - "I will say this one more time, I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski..." Remember the gathering in the Rose Garden to support our Philanderer in Chief? (That was before the blue dress) Subtract Bill Gates, and you have the picture. Except the "woman wronged", standing by her man, is now the Secretary of State!

charlie dewitt| 12.2.08 @ 1:35PM

Quin, I shall look back on this year with undiluted pleasure.

Appleby| 12.2.08 @ 2:03PM

"Maybe Christmas," said the Grinch, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas....perhaps...means a LITTLE BIT MORE."

My beloved Daddy died October 7th of this year and Christmas at our house will be quiet this year. But we will remember our Daddy not for what he bought us -- because he and Mama never made much money -- but for what he gave us that he never had -- he laboured all his life to give us happy memories of our Daddy. He grew up on a hardscrabble farm in the Depression in Wisconsin with 8 brothers and 3 sisters and a father right out of Dickens who eventually hanged himself in the garage of one of his sons while Daddy was lying in hospital with a skull fracture and concussion and a young wife with two babies praying at home ... and he asked me once, suddenly, if I thought his Daddy could be in Heaven. I had to tell him the truth -- that with God all things are possible. And even more possible when a man who never even had his own bed until he joined the Army in World War II could leave his daughters with not only happy memories and a hopeful spirit, but with the knowledge of a Daddy who could believe that God could forgive our sorry Grandfather and take him to Paradise like Jesus took the Thief on the Cross.

In the long run all the Obamas of the world (and the three stooges who are currently taking over my own country by coup -- look North, we are up here in that blank space above the USA) matter not at all, when there's love at home.

Ms. Know| 12.6.08 @ 9:46PM

The left-wing illuminati have made politics bad, because they take it as a joke and a popularity contest, where the conservatives look to influence people's lives for the good.