Religion is a necessary part of conservatism’s philosophical base, because the “is-ought” dichotomy forbids them any other. Without that base, the E-P’ers are just another form of Leftist in fact, and are doomed for the same reasons.

The religionists are on much more solid ground with conservatism, and will not be dislodged from it by those pikers.

In any case, if they can manage a “hegemony” over conservatism, they can have it. Taking over conservatism is not our goal.

Are you sure it is the religious conservatives that will benefit? I’m starting to wonder if the new secular materialist “bio-conservative” movement might not be the benefactor of the demise of the left. Many Evolutionary Psychology conservatives think that they – and not Objectivists – will have a hegemony on the Conservative movement in a couple of generations. Its hard to tell at this stage.

During the Bush Administration, I heard from several commentators among the Objectivist movement that the Left as an intellectual movement was dying, and that the rise of the religious right was attributable to filling in the vacuum left by that decline.

I really wonder to what extent the Left is driven by a desperate suspicion that this is true — that their movement is dying a slow death, and that they need to get these things passed sooner rather than later to take advantage of that “ratchet” which has always worked in their favor — before they lose power again, possibly permanently.

The words our Glorious Leader reads from his teleprompter have become equivalent and even superior to the established law of the land. We mere subjects of the Anointed One are to make his wishes come true or pay the price for being remiss in doing our duty. That what he asks cannot work and has never worked its not to be used as an excuse. We are to try until we have nothing left.

Ultimately the only constraint on government is the constraint We the People assert by exercising our inalienable rights. See the works Thomas Jefferson for instructive details.

An executive agency can only act according to its enabling statutory authority. Enabling statutes for executive agencies are produced by… Congress. If Obama tries to unilaterally impose those regulations via the EPA *in defiance of Congress*, either of the other two branches has the power to shut him down completely. Not that they’d have the spine to actually do it, of course…

This is not a “usurpation of legislative powers“, it is just a practical solution to resistance that the health care bill faces.

Such is the banality of evil. Zyklon B is practical too.