P.S.

Gerry:

A confession -- of sorts. I too have been a fan of de Tocquevill and of Burke. But, as I slip into my dotage, the concerns I have about the evil eye man throws upon man in the race for hegemony one man over another -- bet it in regard to race, or station--leaves me empty of hope in the possibility that de Toquvilles concerns will be solved. That he has more confidence in the justice of God than of man is, for me, a hugely pessimistic admission that he hasn't been able to think through a system that will consider and accept the inallienable equality of man. Put, God into the equation and all you can be responsible for is to keep trying to improve the condition of man emotionally and materially: the practice of liberty.

Me:

He died esssentially without faith and lost it over the course of his life even though he had easy rhetorical recourse to it often in his writing.

And to me you're the springest of chickens. :-)

p.s. It's the dissociation of rationality from experience where the ctitque of Obama starts