Calling It A Night

More thoughts tomorrow; I'm exhausted.  I'll just leave you with this.  Some people have said, since we've all seen Obama's first term, the result was the triumph of hope over experience.  I add too that it is the triumph of denial over reality, and of a cold, narrow, bitter and embittering vision of ever-increasing division over a greater, warmer, brighter promise of inclusion.  Nobody seemed to care that the entire country is going to go bankrupt paying for entitlement addiction by spending borrowed money.  The sheer cynicism of the Obama campaign was breathtaking in places, as it quite knowingly decided to discard half the country with contempt, and the rank complicity and corruption of the media reached almost comical proportions.

I'm not going to lie: I'm sorely - sorely - disappointed with the Romney loss.  I honestly thought the whole thing could - no, would, given the dire straits that we're in at home and abroad - go our way.  It's a bad night for conservatives and libertarians, but ... (and I'm reminding myself as much as I'm reminding anyone) we're optimists.  Fundamentally.  Moping does not become us.

As believers in limited government, the American Dream, the boundless potential of the individual, and the power of actual (not crony) capitalism, free markets, and the private sector to create jobs and improve lives, we don't buy that other vision of drab collectivist dependency, that half-defeatist outlook on life, that zero-sum game, that grasping state leviathan distrusting any success (indeed, any activity) it does not somehow control and compel.  

Oh, soon there will be all kinds of "Monday morning quarterbacking" about the Romney campaign, but that's not really the point.  We have to articulate our cause better.  We have to engage still more.  If ever there were a time to be happy warriors, my darlings, it's now.  

UPDATE: Can't sleep.  I'm going to eat a bunch of leftover Halloween chocolate and read a novel that has nothing to do with school, and I'm going to do that until I pass out, probably with all the lights still on.