Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

Thanks to John Holbo over at Crooked Timber for pointing out a howler from the early pages of David Frum’s Comeback Conservatism. In this excerpt from p. 37, Frum, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior foreign policy advisor for Rudolph 9iu11iani, says John Edwards is neither an economic egalitarian nor a friend of the poor:

Voters sense this truth. It’s an observable fact that those voters who care most deeply about equality – deeply enough to organize their lives to live in egalitarian communities – overwhelmingly vote Republican.

Take a look at a map of the state of Missouri. A recent study conducted by the state identified a dozen of the state’s 114 counties as “equality centers.” These equality centers were located on the outer fringes of St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbia, and Springfield. Every single one of these highly egalitarian areas of the state voted overwhelmingly Republican.

Meanwhile, the most unequal parts of Missouri, the cities and especially the city of St. Louis, voted heavily Democratic. Where you find many different lifestyles and races; where you find singles, immigrants, and gays; where you find high-rise buildings, country estates, and really great take-out – there you find inequality. After all, what is inequality but another form of “diversity”? And what is “equality” but another word for homogeneity? Communities with lots of married families, lots of single-family homes, and low proportions of nonwhite minorities and single people – communities that Democrats and liberals would inwardly disparage as “white bread” – are communities in which people tend to earn similar amounts of money.

If your eyes ever return from rolling back into your head over that bit of wisdom, there’s plenty of reading material at Overnight News Digest to keep you busy for a while.

And don’t forget to call a Senator or two tomorrow to encourage them to help out Chris Dodd on FISA.

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