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Bret Stephens

Earth to GOP: Get a grip

Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms, so long as it’s lawful and consensual and doesn’t impinge in some obvious way on you. This obsession is socially uncouth, politically counterproductive and, too often, unwittingly revealing.

Also, if gay people wish to lead conventionally bourgeois lives by getting married, that may be lunacy on their part but it’s a credit to our values. Channeling passions that cannot be repressed toward socially productive ends is the genius of the American way. The alternative is the tapped foot and the wide stance. …

By the way, what’s so awful about Spanish? It’s a fine European language with an outstanding literary tradition—Cervantes, Borges, Paz, Vargas Llosa—and it would do you no harm to learn it. Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

Which reminds me: Can we, as the GOP base, demand an IQ exam as well as a test of basic knowledge from our congressional and presidential candidates? This is not a flippant suggestion: There were at least five Senate seats in this election cycle that might have been occupied by a Republican come January had not the invincible stupidity of the candidate stood in the way.

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Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms, so long as it’s lawful and consensual and doesn’t impinge in some obvious way on you

People don’t get married in their bedroom. Is there a point to reading the rest?

Rocks on November 13, 2012 at 10:57 AM

Our soldiers are reprimanded for offending islam but No problem when judges do it?

Blake on November 13, 2012 at 10:58 AM

You don’t know me. Quit buying into how the other side defines us or just shut up already.

Fallon on November 13, 2012 at 10:59 AM

Just following along this morning we’re supposed to support amnesty, drop all opposition to gay marriage, and now it appears we must add learning Spanish to the list, do I have that right?

It’s time for a conservative third party.

Kataklysmic on November 13, 2012 at 11:00 AM

If the argument is that these immigrants “steal” jobs, then that’s an argument by someone who either doesn’t understand the free market or aspires for his children to become busboys and chambermaids.

I’m sure this guy thinks people who don’t support amnesty are the bigots here too.

Rocks on November 13, 2012 at 11:00 AM

You don’t know me. Quit buying into how the other side defines us or just shut up already.

Fallon on November 13, 2012 at 10:59 AM

This.

djl130 on November 13, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Earth to Bret: We speak the English language in America. Why should I be the one to learn Spanish? Do I need to learn Mandarin next? What about Arabic?

change is for suckers on November 13, 2012 at 11:01 AM

this is why we need a true conservative to lead the party instead of navel gazers…
Palin 2016

ChuckTX on November 13, 2012 at 11:01 AM

+1 fallon

cmsinaz on November 13, 2012 at 11:02 AM

By the way, what’s so awful about Spanish? It’s a fine European language with an outstanding literary tradition—Cervantes, Borges, Paz, Vargas Llosa—and it would do you no harm to learn it. Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

It’s been amazing watching the so-called “moderates” throw temper tantrums since their guy lost. This one has got to be one of the most hilarious rants yet. I never thought they would become this unhinged. Does anyone even see any difference between this article and Obama campaign rhetoric?

Doomberg on November 13, 2012 at 11:02 AM

It’s a fine European language with an outstanding literary tradition—Cervantes, Borges, Paz, Vargas Llosa…

ZZZZZZZZ. You’ve got the above crap or the telenovelas. I’m not impressed.

Blake on November 13, 2012 at 11:03 AM

Also, if gay people wish to lead conventionally bourgeois lives by getting married, that may be lunacy on their part but it’s a credit to our values. Channeling passions that cannot be repressed toward socially productive ends is the genius of the American way. The alternative is the tapped foot and the wide stance

I do hope he supports men with multiple wives wanting to lead a conventional bourgeois life. If he doesn’t then he’s just a bigot, I guess.

thebrokenrattle on November 13, 2012 at 11:03 AM

but it’s a credit to our values

So now it’s a credit to our values that the institution of marriage is being eroded, and we should be happy about it. Hey that thing that you thought was shaking the foundation of the family and contributing the decay of society? Yeah that’s totally awesome, and you’re some kind of backwards troglodyte bigot with an IQ of 3 if you don’t agree.

Double speak of the day.

Isaiah 5:20

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Tacitus on November 13, 2012 at 11:04 AM

Our soldiers are reprimanded for offending islam but No problem when judges generals do it?

Blake on November 13, 2012 at 10:58 AM

Blake on November 13, 2012 at 11:04 AM

By the way, what’s so awful about Spanish? It’s a fine European language with an outstanding literary tradition—Cervantes, Borges, Paz, Vargas Llosa—and it would do you no harm to learn it. Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

Nothings awful about Spanish. It shouldn’t be required to work. What’s awful is you can pretty much guarantee that if you are in a service related job and are competing against someone who can speak Spanish you will not get the job. If forcing people to use English in government transactions and education were part of our law many more people would learn English, they don’t.

And where to you get off going on about virtue? Didn’t you just get through telling us we need to get out of other people’s bedrooms?

Rocks on November 13, 2012 at 11:06 AM

People don’t get married in their bedroom. Is there a point to reading the rest?

Rocks on November 13, 2012 at 10:57 AM

QFT.

SAZMD on November 13, 2012 at 11:07 AM

If the argument is that these immigrants “steal” jobs, then that’s an argument by someone who either doesn’t understand the free market or aspires for his children to become busboys and chambermaids

I love how the write doesnt see the blantant steriotypical racism in this statement.

ChunkyLover on November 13, 2012 at 11:07 AM

Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms, so long as it’s lawful and consensual and doesn’t impinge in some obvious way on you. This obsession is socially uncouth, politically counterproductive and, too often, unwittingly revealing.

Unless anyone has seriously discussed banning sex, or sex outside of marriage, then there is absolutely no point to this paragraph and, I daresay, nothing in the article worth reading.

Shump on November 13, 2012 at 11:08 AM

Sometimes Bret loses it.
Is he talking about conservatives? Or leftists who cannot and could not for one single moment of any day in the last 100 years keep themselves from poking into our lives and trying to run them for us because we’re simply too stupid to do it for ourselves.

vityas on November 13, 2012 at 11:09 AM

Also, if gay people wish to lead conventionally bourgeois lives by getting married, that may be lunacy on their part but it’s a credit to our values.

No, it’s not. The goal of the homosexual lobby is not to “channel their passions”. It is not to achieve stable families. It is to have deviancy defined as normal. It is to force the rest of society to accept their deviant and immoral behavior.

Shump on November 13, 2012 at 11:10 AM

I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. My parents were Irish, so no issues with the English language there. But then there were the Italian grocers on the corner, next to the Greek bar owner, followed by the Pole who owned the knick knack shop. Then there was the German lady who lived next door. And during the sixties, a Cuban family showed up and lots of people from Puerto Rico. Funny thing, ALL of them learned English. Nobody asked us in the US to learn their language. They realized that if they wanted to be Americans, they needed to learn the American language. One of the Cuban family went to grammar school with me. He didn’t speak one word of English when he showed up. Not one word. Within a year, he spoke it just like us.

This adjusting our culture to everyone else’s bull has got to stop.

NavyMustang on November 13, 2012 at 11:11 AM

You don’t know me. Quit buying into how the other side defines us or just shut up already.

Fallon on November 13, 2012 at 10:59 AM

Yes.

Has anyone ever won a war listening to the counsel of their enemy?

Do I need to state something that should be BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS?

Chip on November 13, 2012 at 11:12 AM

There were at least five Senate seats in this election cycle that might have been occupied by a Republican come January had not the invincible stupidity of the candidate stood in the way.

Well, he at least got this part right. The rest of it is bunk, though. There’s room for a party that stands up for traditional morals. It’s true that making moral issues the centerpiece of the party is a mistake; most Americans don’t believe that Uncle Sam should be able to tell you what to do in your personal life. But if we deliver the message in a smart way, it’s possible to win a lot of minority voters with our morally conservative message.

hawksruleva on November 13, 2012 at 11:13 AM

Well it’s good to see that conservatives buy into there own bad and incorrect press. Good job.

Cindy Munford on November 13, 2012 at 11:13 AM

Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

why stop and Bilingualism why not tri- quad- or septa-

lets ditch the european alphabet and adopt chinese ideograms thats how they got around the inherit division that bilingualism causes.

ChunkyLover on November 13, 2012 at 11:13 AM

Well we SHOULD be skeptical when a Social Conservative wins a primary with the help of Democrats and Democrat money. Come on…. born yesterday? Just because you want something so bad…

rhombus on November 13, 2012 at 11:14 AM

On the subject of idiocy, can someone explain where’s the political gold in demonizing Latin American immigrants?

You forgot a word in there, genius.

Thanks for the sermon, that’s 5 minutes which would have been better spent by me using a Dremel tool on my own teeth.

Bishop on November 13, 2012 at 11:15 AM

Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms

Why don’t people get that this a frickin line that the Democrats have fed you hook line and sinker and yall are fish. This is the Democrats version of putting a gold coin out and you liberal Republicans saying “ooooh shiny.”

melle1228 on November 13, 2012 at 11:17 AM

Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

America is a melting pot. What this writer seems to want is more of a food court, with lots of different cultures neatly preserved. But that’s not what makes America great. Chinese immigrants don’t come here because of Chinatown. Immigrants come to the U.S. for opportunity. And learning English gives them the best chance to succeed.

I know some people advocate keeping every ethnic group in their own ghetto, but that doesn’t normally work out well.

hawksruleva on November 13, 2012 at 11:17 AM

I hate to go all Biblical on people but the book of Romans clearly states that a society that adopts and celebrates homosexuality as normal is a degenerate society and God will judge it. You don’t have to like it, but there it is.

DaydreamBeliever on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

Oh and this is EXACTLY why we lose. OUR SIDE demonizes its allies instead of the enemy. When Gore and Kerry lost in 2000 and 2004 to a rightie, did the Democratic party point guns at the left and then run a moderate.. Frickin no, they went full out leftist with Obama. We eat our own. Even if socons disappeared tomorrow, you crybabies would find someone else to blame.

melle1228 on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms

I don’t give a shit what anyone does in their bedroom.

As a true (fiscal) conservative, what I find objectionable is that the left is obsessed with how much money I make and what I do with it. Is this so hard for the left to understand?

Of course it is, since they can’t fund their utopia without confiscating my hard earned money.

UltimateBob on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

So we also are for eliminating laws against polygamy, right? Discrimination by number is no different than discrimination by gender, right? Plus, polygamy has historical and religious precedences that gay marriage does not.

You CANNOT support one without the the other without resorting to ludicrous contortions of logic.

I do NOT obsess over what consenting adults do in the bedrooms; I do have concerns about what gets codified into law that changes the very meaning of words for the ‘Do as you feel’ crowd.

michaelo on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

I have noticed that the NY/DC/LA ruling class wants to make this about immigration and social issues instead of economics.

They are scared to death the GOP will go country party, become more populist, and challenge the delicate position of power the ruling class presently enjoys.

Punchenko on November 13, 2012 at 11:20 AM

I hate to go all Biblical on people but the book of Romans clearly states that a society that adopts and celebrates homosexuality as normal is a degenerate society and God will judge it. You don’t have to like it, but there it is.

DaydreamBeliever on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

I don’t think anybody’s denying what’s in your Bible. That’s really not the point, thought. And second, I’d put money on it that you love going all Biblical.

rhombus on November 13, 2012 at 11:21 AM

Whaddaya mean “we” conservatives?

connertown on November 13, 2012 at 11:23 AM

….Is this article a spoof?

Dongemaharu on November 13, 2012 at 11:24 AM

Oh and this is EXACTLY why we lose. OUR SIDE demonizes its allies instead of the enemy. When Gore and Kerry lost in 2000 and 2004 to a rightie, did the Democratic party point guns at the left and then run a moderate.. Frickin no, they went full out leftist with Obama. We eat our own. Even if socons disappeared tomorrow, you crybabies would find someone else to blame.

melle1228 on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

It’s pretty clear this guy isn’t in any way, shape, or form, on “our side.”

Third party or bust.

Doomberg on November 13, 2012 at 11:24 AM

So we also are for eliminating laws against polygamy, right? Discrimination by number is no different than discrimination by gender, right? Plus, polygamy has historical and religious precedences that gay marriage does not.

michaelo on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

That’s coming, of course.

rhombus on November 13, 2012 at 11:25 AM

GOP to Bret Stephens…
Grip This!

connertown on November 13, 2012 at 11:25 AM

Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms, so long as it’s lawful and consensual and doesn’t impinge in some obvious way on you.

NOt this stupid “republicans/conservatives want to tell you what you can and can’t do in your bedroom” like agian.

Show me one bill that replubicans are tryign to pass taht does such a thing. Just one.

DethMetalCookieMonst on November 13, 2012 at 11:26 AM

Oh and this is EXACTLY why we lose. OUR SIDE demonizes its allies instead of the enemy. When Gore and Kerry lost in 2000 and 2004 to a rightie, did the Democratic party point guns at the left and then run a moderate.. Frickin no, they went full out leftist with Obama. We eat our own. Even if socons disappeared tomorrow, you crybabies would find someone else to blame.

melle1228 on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

Exactly. Was there any talk among Democrats about making concessions or taking a second look at fiscal conservatism after they got killed in the 2010 midterms?

Kataklysmic on November 13, 2012 at 11:26 AM

As for Spanish, I have no problems with it- nor my wife’s native Chinese, nor my girls’ native Lugandan. But this nation needs to have a single unifying language- English- or hundreds of official languages. Spanish-only linguistically segregates the Hispanic people from the rest of non-Spanish speaking society. And to demand they allow them do do so, eliminates the ‘rights’ of millions of others whose first language is neither English NOR Spanish. ‘Rights’ cannot be based on raw numbers, folks.

Freedom to speak any language you wish is there. The right to deal officially in other SELECT second languages should NOT be.

michaelo on November 13, 2012 at 11:27 AM

By the way, what’s so awful about Spanish?

What’s so awful about learning how to speak English?

You came to us. We didn’t go to you. It’s not up to us to adjust for you. You adjust for us or GTFO.

Moesart on November 13, 2012 at 11:30 AM

As a true (fiscal) conservative, what I find objectionable is that the left is obsessed with how much money I make and what I do with it. Is this so hard for the left to understand?

UltimateBob on November 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

I’m still flabbergasted at the number of people who can not grasp this simple concept.

Washington Nearsider on November 13, 2012 at 11:34 AM

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So tired of the lectures!

gophergirl on November 13, 2012 at 11:39 AM

Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

Isn’t it conservatives that are asking immigrants to learn another languege? Sounds like support for being bilingual to me.

DethMetalCookieMonst on November 13, 2012 at 11:41 AM

Is anyone else getting angry with the Fox News/Wall Street Journal War and Markets activism?

I hate to break it to Brett Stephens, but WE have two languages then WE are no longer WE anymore. Good luck trying to bribe heartlanders to fight for wars for globalization.

ninjapirate on November 13, 2012 at 11:44 AM

bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

Bilingualism is an individual virtue, not a societal one. If he’s not smart enough to know that then he’s not smart enough to listen to.

ninjapirate on November 13, 2012 at 11:46 AM

Could we cheer everytime a baby is murdered in the womb…jezzz

trs on November 13, 2012 at 11:46 AM

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