Rod Dreher – 2parse

Rod Dreher, The Crunchy Conservative:

In other words, for this blogger [the Cunning Realist], a vote for Obama is a vote against the possibility of true and destabilizing political radicalism emerging out of the economic tsunami breaking upon us. Interesting. I see where he’s coming from. At the request of a publication I contribute to, I was asked to prepare a piece to run if Obama wins, and one to run if McCain wins. Writing the McCain piece, I was kind of surprised by how depressed I was by the thought of a McCain victory. Depressed in the sense of seeing nothing good coming from it. It’s a strange position to be in – I don’t think a president as liberal as Obama would be good for the country, but four years of McCain, coming into power just as the economy is falling off a cliff and the conservatives are falling to pieces, would be as angry and as rotten as any since Nixon’s time.

From Robert G. Kaiser of the Washington Post:

Theodore Sorensen, JFK’s speechwriter and alter ego, observed yesterday: “Only the Adams family in the earliest days of the republic had the kind of stature, respect and impact on public life as the Kennedys.” And not only that – in an age of celebrification, the Kennedys became the country’s leading political celebrities.

That combination probably explains the sharp intake of breath heard yesterday all over Washington and across the country when people learned the news about Kennedy’s illness.

Rod Dreher of the Crunchy Conservative blog asked his readers to pray for Kennedy yesterday. As with many partisans, his readers seem to suffer from a lack of charity. Dreher felt forced to respond in a defensive tone:

UPDATE.2: You would have thought that asking for prayers for a man diagnosed with brain cancer would be a simple enough request. Check out the comments thread, though. Man. I was just talking with a colleague here, who reminded me that when Ronald Reagan died, we had lots of people writing in to say they’d be happy to dance on his grave.

UPDATE.3: Perhaps this will be a more edifying thread all the way around if we use it to discuss the proper way to pray for people we consider to be our enemies, or at least consider to be immoral and harmful to the common good. Because sooner or later, we’ll all be in the position of being asked to pray for a politician we may despise. I have no doubt that if George W. Bush had been diagnosed with brain cancer, we’d have just as many people on the thread below saying they’re not going to pray for the likes of him. How does one pray for the welfare we dislike, despise or disrespect?

Just reading Dreher’s response makes me feel ill.