More from Dr. Fleming on voting

In the comments to Tom Piatak's contribution to the Editors' Round Table:

Voting for the GOP is a vote that dooms any hope of a conservative resurgence. Voting for any of the current Third Parties is a waste of time except as a protest vote that will not be counted or noticed. Not voting has at least the merit of showing your indifference. (Anyone want a bumper sticker, Don’t blame me: I didn’t vote for anybody”?) The only hope would be in a conservative coalition, not a party, that could work with the GOP when necessary and agree on a set of core principles. But who would be in it? Not, certainly, the homicidal maniacs who watch John Hagee, Pat Robertson, and company. Certainly not the Ultra-trad Catholics who say they hate their country. Certainly not the libertarians who repudiate loyalty to anything from family to party to nation. The tent just keeps shrinking. What I would like to see is a few hundred thousand people with the clarity of purpose and courage to begin to act together on principles that are Christian and conservative, and, no, they would not admit people like Ms Palin into the tent. This is not going to happen because, I fear, because otherwise intelligent conservatives cling to a hope that is really a form of despair, the hope that some flawed leader will ride in on a White Horse to save the republic. That is why Palin’s nomination was enough to enlist their support for a man they have always despised.

I remember years ago, fighting some of these battles with Rothbard and his followers, working in tandem with some disgruntled leftists and with Old Right political intellectuals like Paul Gottfried. Many things conspired to teach me how futile these efforts must be, not least of which was the statement, made repeatedly by Gottfried, that we had to measure our success by access to the NY Times, Washington Post, NPR. In other words, we had to let our acknowledged enemies define us. So now, conservative “success” means signing on to the campaign of a leftist Republican who wanted Holy Joe Lieberman as his running mate. To quote the late great beatnik poet Kenneth Patchen, “And the thing is, they never get wise.” This from his poem, “I don’t want to startle you, but they’re going to kill all of us.” Indeed, they are.