Dreher embraced Catholicism before he had any children and about the time he was married. One thing about Dreher: he’s a terribly other-directed man. He’s admitted that he was attracted to the Church because people he respect (e.g. Richard John Neuhaus) were figures within it.

Ah, that’s interesting. Thanks for clarifying. I guess my “suspect and hypothesize” was correct insofar as I concluded he became a Catholic, but not because of Catholicism. But it was incorrect with respect to what it was that he did see in it, at the time. (I was making a guess on the basis of what seemed to differentiate his experience of an Eastern Orthodox parish from the complaints I heard him making about his experience in Catholic parishes.)

Those of us following Dreher and tangling with him online during the period running from 2002 to 2006 noticed…

Interesting. I don’t think I’d ever heard of him that far back, so I have no concept of what he was doing or saying at the time. If you don’t mind my asking, in what sense were you “tangling with him online?” Did you have a blog? Or just commenting on his? And was he published anywhere prominent at the time, or is that only in more recent years?

I hope the glitch has stopped now.

I don’t see evidence of it happening to anyone else, at least so far, so perhaps it has something to do with your browser or your computer??

I really don’t know why you’re still arguing about this business of Eisenhower vs. Coolidge. My point (which I’ll repeat now for the last time) is that Trump isn’t an anomaly or anything new in regard to fiscal prudence or lack thereof. It’s been going on among Republicans for a very long time, and one of the many reasons is that anyone who was truly fiscally prudent, like Coolidge was, could never get elected today.

I would imagine there’s some fringe candidate who really does espouse “fiscal prudence” a la Coolidge, but that person will remain a fringe candidate. And if somehow that person got elected, he or she would never get Congress to cooperate even if it was packed with Republicans.

There was a glitch which eliminated on posting most of the text. The text would appear in the dialogue box, but not in the finished post. I had to break the post into two sections so it would appear correctly. I made four posts, the first two ruined, the latter two proper.

You could say that. The thing is, Coolidge’s decisions were made within a different matrix than Eisenhower’s on account of the situations they inherited. The Cold War wasn’t going to evaporate if Ike waved a Fiscal-Responsiblity wand. People weren’t going to react with equanimity of their Social Security checks ceased to arrive. Recall that Robert Taft sponsored a piece of urban renewal legislation in 1949 (something few Republican legislators would consider today).

Are you having some problem viewing your comments in a timely fashion? I noticed several duplicates or near-duplicates, and I eliminated one, but now I see another. Is there some time lag going on? Some glitch?

xx

This was a rather strange subject for him to use limited and valuable tv time on.

He offered one sentence. And it wasn’t strange at all. Eisenhower was a military professional. The thing is, most of his career was spent in the inter-war military. The ratio of military expenditure to domestic product was < 0.02 during that era (close to 0.01 most years). Military manpower in 1940 was about 385,000 on active duty (a proportionately similar # today would be 950,000). He was familiar with wartime spikes in military expenditure (1917-20, 1940-46 being examples) as having precedent. What did not, in his view, was abiding levels of military expenditure 'twixt 6% and 15% of domestic product. That was our situation between 1946 and 1961. Military conscription was in place almost continuously between September 1940 and January 1973, suspended only for one year (March 1947 to March 1948). Up to 30% of our manpower was posted outside the United States and its dependencies.

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This was a rather strange subject for him to use limited and valuable tv time on.

He offered one sentence. And it wasn’t strange at all. Eisenhower was a military professional. The thing is, most of his career was spent in the inter-war military. The ratio of military expenditure to domestic product was 85% of our troops are stationed in the United States or its possessions. Only Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Afghanistan have a five-digit complement of American troops. Military service is entirely voluntary, and the share of the adult male population who undertake a stint in the military might be around 12% or so.