Can we keep America exceptional?

President Obama insists that America is not exceptional. Yet for his flawed economic policies to work, he must rely on an amazing degree of exceptionalness. Like any nation, we are not exempt from the consequences of ill-considered choices. We have the advantage of observing the outcome that decades of overspending and social profligacy have caused in Europe -- welfare dependency, oppressive taxation and insurmountable debt. And riots.

America is indeed exceptional in many important ways: freedom, innovation, opportunity, honor. But bloated government outlays and intrusive, business-thwarting regulations bring economic collapse, even here.

Ready for Some Watershed Thinking?

By John Andrews As conservatives, the only question is not how should we vote. How should we live? How should we treat people? How should we view America and its future? I've long believed that many of the answers are hiding in plain sight, up near the Continental Divide in my imaginary hometown of the heart, Backbone, Colorado. It was the dateline for over a hundred of my Denver Post columns in the past decade, and they're now collected in a new book, Backbone Colorado USA: Dispatches from the Divide.

You can nibble these brief, practical essays like popcorn, but get ready for a healthy jolt -- this is power food for hungry citizens. Or to change the metaphor: it's watershed thinking to help readers draw the line between the postmodern laziness that will sink America and the aroused civic courage we must summon up to save our country. Order your copy today, plus a couple of extras to give as gifts. And please let me know what you think of it.

Jerry Brown slurs Whitman -- earns NOW's endorsement

The timing couldn't be more profound: just one day after California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is caught on tape as a campaign aide calls Meg Whitman a "whore", the National Organization for Women announces -- you guessed it -- that it is supporting Jerry Brown for Governor. Proving that liberal orthodoxy trumps gender every time, NOW not only is endorsing a man over a woman in California, but it is apparently not concerned with Brown's acceptance of sexist, demeaning language being used against his opponent. In NOW's view, Whitman -- who is pro-life -- apparently doesn't warrant the kind of protection from mysogynist attacks that the group's charter is supposed to provide all women. But as it has proven time and time again, female conservatives are the wrong kind of women. Not that NOW can't be enraged by a politician's words -- just not those of Democrat politicians. Posted prominently on the NOW website, the group is vehemently denouncing Senator Jim DeMint's "dangerous comments" on gays and sexually active single women "being unfit to teach". According to NOW, DeMint's comments to a "conservative church group" make him a "sexist bigot" who is "ignorant, homophobic" and unfit to serve in the U.S. Congress. DeMint actually made these comments six years ago, and was only recently reflecting on the impact they had in the media in a speech he gave last week to the Greater Freedom Rally in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And he actually said that "gays and unmarried pregnant women" should not be public school teachers -- a statement that NOW extrapolated to mean "sexually active single women" -- as if every sexually active single woman gets pregnant. Leaving aside the wisdom of DeMint's views on these issues, is putting forward a value statement on public education really worse than calling a woman a "whore"?

For NOW -- which has never met a conservative woman it can support, a man who uses a sexist slur is still better than a self-made woman who embodies the very feminist values of hard work and female mobility that the group is supposed to stand for.

Shameful.