The Battle Is Joined

After the start of Brightest Day and the parasitic evil of Tax Day, I face my final day at ACSH, and tonight I plan to exit the office carrying the last significant object I need to remove from my office: a giant, black, blasphemous, cardboard cross emblazoned with the words “The Exorcist: The Beginning” that I found in the trash at the movie theatre across the street.

Fittingly, I’ll carry it downtown and — assuming I can somehow safely stow it for the duration of the 7:10 show of The Cartel (a documentary about schools and the most destructive faction in domestic politics, teachers unions) — will then pop into the Drinking Skeptically gathering at Dewey’s Flatiron with it to amuse the atheists.

Speaking of bar gatherings, the Manhattans Project, as it will now punningly be known, moves to Langan’s (47th and 7th) this coming Monday (day one of the new cable news job), meeting there each third Monday of the month at 7pm henceforth.

But the most exciting libertarian-friendly and conservative-friendly gatherings going on these days are surely the Tea Parties, and I was pleased to hear that my parents attended one yesterday and spotted multiple Norwich, CT neighbors including my friend Paul Taylor’s parents — as well as one neighbor with a big Don’t Tread on Me flag (Mom also notes seeing a photo of my libertarian former boss John Stossel in an article on mustaches).  My parents may yet out-radical me, and given the math-flouting big-spending freefall of our profligate government, not a moment too soon.  We haven’t a dime left for welfare or warfare, and it all needs to end now.

If that sounds like quixotic Ron Paul-type talk, note that Drudge-linked article revealing, as if in a moment from a dream, that Ron Paul now polls roughly even with Obama in a hypothetical 2012 presidential contest.  If he can win the primaries, I say go for it.  Even if he lost, it accustoms the American mind to future such candidates, possibly including his equally libertarian son, Rand Paul.

But even if the GOP goes with a more statist candidate such as Romney, it’s nice to see that there’s a growing popular movement of people out there who understand better than the major parties that government spending is the problem.  The presence of moderates and disaffected Democrats in that movement is also very encouraging — better than anything I’d have hoped for two years ago.  And if they seem disaffected and disloyal enough to be a swing vote, of course, that’s even better, since the Democrats, Republicans, and the wee but surely increasingly optimistic Libertarian Party will all be trying to court them, if the parties are smart (a big if).

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As for me, I should apologize for how coy I’ve been about my political views over the years and will endeavor to change that, interacting with liberals henceforth not as if they’re bad — nor as if our differences don’t matter — but as if they, like all of us, are capable of changing their minds and ought now to do so.

This is as close to the fight we anti-government folk have waited for as we’re ever likely to get.  Let’s get started.

If you believe in math, friends — even my leftist and green and downright Marxist friends — now’s the time to jettison your pro-government-spending notions of the past.  It’s over.  Join us in limiting this out of control leviathan.  Or else go down in history as something absurd akin to defenders of absolute monarchy or fascism.

Perhaps I can persuade some people when I do my final performance of that Ayn Rand speech at Columbia, which appears likely to be May Day now — which may be even better than the originally-planned Cinco de Mayo, if not perfectly anniversarial (she was there in May 1960, in any case).

And keep reading ACSH’s work under the new editor there, since science, like econ, is an inescapable fact of the universe and will have consequences, whether hippies, gurus, and health food clerks like it or not.