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The D-R UniParty breath of Atë, come hot from hell, has shorn from the rock of relevance two or three generations of Conservative and Libertarian pundits.

Virtually the entire list of their most trafficked blogs and journals belongs in the company of that description. Intellectually, morally, religiously they proved unprepared for and therefore unable before the task at hand: cooling off the engine room of the American ship of state.

They believed strongly and argued fervently, even attractively, that values solve problems of culture and politics solve problems of statecraft. Neither one of those beliefs held by Conservative and Libertarian pundits is warranted. All their arguments for those beliefs are shorn away by the sheer force of events.

Conservative and libertarian values have not restored cool calm to America’s engine room. Conservative and Libertarian politics have not gotten America underway quietly and surely so she can navigate.

We have had now one and a half brief and glorious glimpses of America underway on the sea of life, self-steering, signaling carefully with her sister nations, engines humming contentedly while shafts and screws turn normally at normal temperatures. Half a glimpse was the Reagan Presidency. Full glimpse was the Trump Presidency. Conservative and Libertarian pundits could prolong neither. More importantly, they could generate nor understand either of those Presidencies. Ronald Reagan was and Donald Trump is a man of love for his country and countrymen.

To generate and understand, one needs love. Augustine put it this way: credo ut intelligam (I believe in order to understand). Only the loving heart spreads peace, inspires hard work, cools atmospheres, and cultivates understanding. Only love can operate safely a nation’s engine room.

Breitbart famously taught Conservative and Libertarian pundits that culture is upstream from politics. (Better for them were it had they understood that before Breitbart taught them it). Breitbart did not teach, even more importantly, that religion is upstream from culture. Such that, if you would restore politics by improving culture, you must improve culture by restoring religion. Restore religion and you have restored politics.

Religion is not politics, not by any practice or logic, and even less is religion law or capable of being made law. Religion is spiritual practice with a view to reuniting a person’s consciousness with the divinity that is their nature. Spiritual practice has a soothing effect and yields both clarity of thought and sweetness of heart and speech. Spiritual practice is a personal, not a political instrument. Religion is a prius of political instruments, one of several. It helps make those instruments legitimate. The American Founders observed no less than that.

For, if love be not present in government and politics, government and politics be nor present.

A new ideosphere is ready for presentation, a fresh set of eyes and ears on the job, and mouths to say it. Conservative and Libertarian blogs and journals of recent decades are as the stones of Jerusalem after Titus had done with them. Something is coming along, deeper culture, stronger religion, simpler morality. Quiet is at its center. The day of sacerdotal leadership, ecclesial and profane, is gone.

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Man preens himself that he knows everything but when asked about himself, he hangs his head in shame. Man knows the news of every land, but he is ignorant of the nuisance he is to himself and others. He is moving in darkness but yearning for Ananda (bliss). He does not know the means of securing Ananda through prayer, selfless service, study of spiritual texts, meditation and silence. He has no faith that he is Ananda and that Ananda is his own nature. He is blown off by calamity; for he has no strength to withstand that blow. Faith in the God within is the toughest shield against the thrusts of fate. Nests laboriously built by birds are torn away by storms; fragrant petals of flowers are felled by rain. Defeat and victory are the obverse and reverse of the same coin! When you welcome one, you have willy-nilly to welcome the other too! Forbearance, compassion and incorruptible virtue are the three pillars of a happy life.