"Conservatives’ big mistake was to nominate McCain in the first place."

I think that McCain's victory in the primaries was largely due to our "open" primary system where in some critical states, Independents and Democrats are allowed to cast their votes for Republican candidates. That McCain was propelled to the nomination should serve as a good case for primary system reform.

@40:
Regarding the choice between public and Christian schools: I fear that as time passes there is not much difference between them because most, if not all, of the teachers in public and private schools are products of state teachers' curriculae/certification programs and this affects both what is taught and how it is taught in private schools. My older daughter graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree and certificate in early childhood education. Many of her required courses were intended to impart feminist doctrine, multiculturalism, and similar indoctrination. She learned more about teaching and developed as a teacher before she went to college by serving first as a supervised volunteer for a couple years and then as a paid summer program counselor for a private elementary school. She taught younger children arts and crafts, reading, math, games (sports), and similar skills.

Yes, there is an opportunity for political reorganization among conservatives who may have learned a few lessons from the past 25 years. Lesson one is to stick to your own people and, generically speaking, your own religion. Making common cause with atheist-materialists, Nietzscheans, Muslims, and other non-Christians is futile and self-destructive. Lesson number two is to plan for hte long-term. When Goldwater went down in flames in 1964, it took four presidential terms for conservatives to be able to field a presidential candidate in the GOP. It was thanks to people like Bill Rusher, working for 20 years, that Ronald Reagan--for whatever that was worth-got elected. Conservative activists today want the world and they want it now. Since the 1960's we have all been infantile in demanding instant gratification. The result of precipitous action, of following the motto "something must be done" would be something like Sarah Palin under the control of the neoconservatives. Murray Rothbard, a doomed political activist, used to say that liberals were always looking for a problem so they could say, "we can't stand idly by." To which Murray would, in his inimitable manner--somewhere between a shriek and a cackle--cry out, "Why can't we."

Let me conclude with the words of an obscure poet in a verse satire on photography:

Nothing remains to hold against the rage:
our soldiers do not fight nor bishops pray.
Painting and music? Another lame excuse
for living badly, staying out of touch.
Not even Jeffers' mountains look that good,
their wilderness is tamed by taxes, roads.
Then what is left, good health and half your wits--
the code of athletes and couples without kids,
who have two incomes and no fear of death?
Recite this pledge: I will forget myself,
forget the broken hearts and Ph.D.'s who've taught
the young to hate the world, the flesh, and God;
I'll plant flowers, love my wife as she grows gray,
and make some Baptist teach me how to pray;
give up on cameras and on everything
that I shall someday grieve to leave behind.
I will ignore the symptoms of my disease,
and--spouting green the Spring--go paint the trees
not as they seem but as they first were made
and await the second coming of the Word.

Real conservatives, democrats and other leftists knew that McCain was DOA as soon as he won the nomination. (If someone ever writes a chronicle of Mac's ill-fated adventurer, they could call it "Dead Man Walking II).

Only McCain and the GOP appartchiki believed he had any more than a snowball's chance in hell of becoming president.

Conservatives did not nominate McCain. The crucial early primary wins that made McCain the favorite (New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida) all showed McCain NOT winning a plurality of the Republican vote, much less the conservative vote. Rather, these states all have "open primaries" in which Democrats and "independents" can decide who the GOP nominee will be. This can be confirmed from the news stories of the exit polls from these primaries.

Job #1 for conservatives is to write their state GOP chairmen and demand closed primaries.

I'll try to respond to Mr. Hayter later today by finally posting a brief conclusion to my column, one that will justify the title.

Here’s the ugly reality. The Authentic Right had a great standard bearer in Pat Buchanan in 1996 and 2000, and in Ron Paul in 2008. The people, OUR people, rejected them. Insofar as I am further to the Right than these distinguished gentlemen, it pains me to acknowledge this, but it’s true, isn’t it?

Worse, Ron Paul was not badly funded. Buchanan was well known in ‘96, even a celebrity. He’d been around the GOP for decades, worked in the White House, etc. But the idiots chose Dole, and later McCain. And those were the ‘conservatives’!

Let’s face it: America is basically leftist, as is the Anglosphere, as is Europe. The West is now left-liberal in its primary ideo-cultural orientation. The Left has never really lost since its violent birth in 1789. Sometimes it overreaches, as with vicious, inefficient communism, or the cultural excesses of the 60s, but the macro-trend is clear.

On one side of the ideological divide stands work, family, country, patriarchy, racial exclusivity, sexual normality, liberty, order, value, morality, religion, discipline, law, sovereignty, justice, culture, civility, rationality, tradition, life.

On the other side stands EQUALITY. Equality has won unconditionally.

The (authentic) American Right should forget about winning “the whole enchilada”, political majorities, the Presidency, and the like, and instead focus its very limited capital simply on promoting those issues most related to basic cultural, economic and physical survival for OUR (conservative/Middle American) people: 1) stopping all (non-white) immigration; 2) safeguarding gun rights; 3) protecting private property and capitalism; 4) executing or at least incarcerating violent criminals; and, a deceptively remote-seeming issue, 5) preserving American national sovereignty (from transnational absorption or erasure). These are the core issues (note I did not mention national defense: liberals want some military, probably enough actually to protect the nation from any unlikely invasions).

Yes, we care about many other things, but they are secondary. The liberals can ruin them without harming the physical needs of ordinary people. And we on the Right have so very, very little wealth, influence or power …