Just remember, we're the party that believes in the necessity and meaning of suffering--and especially humiliation. So really, we win again! Offer this $#@! up, y'all. - Eve Tushnet, listing a positive of the Obama win

As a black conservative, I can appreciate how far we have come in this country — I even felt a tinge of pain as my family and I went to the polls and voted against Obama — but we will not have truly transcended race in America until who you voted for is not assumed because of the color of your skin. - commenter on "The Corner"

Rather than looking at Obama as an African, or an African-American, or a fringe liberal, his story makes most sense if you think of him being the child of a broken family. It's all there -- the need to be loved by everybody, the identity crisis and drug use, the relishing attention, the search for a community to belong to (even the point of organizing a community to be a part of). So if you want to blame your (Babyboom) generation for something in particular, how about skyrocketing divorce? As for my generation, well, as you say, Gens X and Y, which I straddle, are simply practicing crass identity politics. Obama to them really is "new" and fresh, nevermind the specifics. It's really something to see, and I don't think I would have understood the depths of it if not for the Facebook account I opened in March. My generation is sinfully stupid. - commenter on Bill Luse's blog

Politics has never really been my thing. At least that's the kind of thing I say. I say it, and try to believe it, mostly because I don't want to get in trouble...The truth is, however, politics IS my thing. It's my thing primarily because God made it my thing when he made me. He made all of us to be political - to use our gifts and talents and formed insights for the good of society. This is involves such 'nasty' things as actually listening to one another, thinking, researching, building community, and putting yourself out there both in both dialogue and action. - Mary of "Broken Alabaster"

I must re-read Huxley's Brave New World. A feminine form of totalitarianism. How lovely. I always thought Huxley's title came from Shakespeare's Miranda in The Tempest, but Wikipedia set me straight when it points out a poem from Rudyard Kipling in 1919 with the following lines: "And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins / When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins. . ." - blogger at Muellerstuff

I don’t mind making logical arguments in the public forum. I just think it’s a misguided use of resources to expect that they will have much impact. Amy, I don’t know anyone who was directly influenced by Catholics for Obama, but they didn’t need to be. The tide sweeping the U.S. (of which Cs for O is a symptom, not a cause) picked them up and carried them off just fine. So what do we do now? I’m feisty and I’m not just going to sit here. And, figuratively speaking, I can see Russia from my house. - Roz of Exultet

There’s a wrenching non sequitur for you. - Tom of Disputations responding to the comment 'as an attorney himself, Prof. Kmiec surely knows the importance of candor.'

Christians who voted for Obama told themselves that we just needed a "change."... Those folks drank a little too deeply of the Obama Kool Aid. Other Christians are patting themselves on the back for voting 3rd party, and from what I can gather are comforting themselves by thinking these are the last days I guess. And my nemesis Candy thinks Obama was elected because of the Jesuits. I kid you not. In the meantime I think for pro-life conservative Christians, we have to keep the faith, we have to live the faith and we have to be more outspoken about it. Steve Kellmeyer notes that it took France just ten years to go from a monarchy to a dictatorship. As long as we have a constitution, congressmen only have a two year term and those elections are coming up in 2010. Congressmen have a six year term, and the president is up every four. Let's calm down, regroup, and prepare to make a "change" and send a message then. - Elena of "My Domestic Church"

Conservatism is inherently a tradition of complicity, satire, internal conflict, and cynicism. So with the Messiah as our next president, we're in like Patricia Quinn! - Another from Eve Tushnet

That's all your money. - Barack Obama via "Social Engineer" concerning one U.S. corporation's profit

And while the agony of having a tattoo has been likened to childbirth - the most painful areas are anywhere that is bony, and on the tender flesh of the inside of the wrist - there is only one form of tattoo that has ever denoted real suffering, or real heroism. My best friend's grandmother has a tattoo, a series of numbers, on the inside of her wrist...She was given the tattoo when she was a small child, upon entering a Nazi concentration camp. - Liz Jones

“Abolitionists need to reach out to Jefferson Davis knowing well that he will not agree with them on some 'fundamental issues'...“Capitalists need to reach out to Joe Stalin knowing well that he will not agree with them on some fundamental issues”...“Jews need to reach out to Hitler knowing well that he will not agree with them on some fundamental issues”...Pro-lifers reaching out to Obama is as pathetic as it is stupid. - Commenter on "American Catholic" blog

"Arbeit macht frei" (work makes you free, or work brings freedom) was not first and foremost a Nazi slogan. It originally was the title of a novel by Lorenz Diefenbach, but gained wide currency as a good progressive/liberal catchphrase in the Weimar Republic to justify big New Dealish public works programs. - Jonah Goldberg at "Liberal Fascism"

In the last four decades, following the pattern of American Protestantism, many, perhaps most, Catholics view the Church in terms of consumption rather than obligation. The Church is there to supply their spiritual needs as they define those needs, not to tell them what to believe or do. This runs very deep both sociologically and psychologically. It is part of the “success” of American Catholics in becoming just like everybody else. Bishops and all of us need to catch the vision of John Paul II that the Church imposes nothing, she only proposes. But what she proposes she believes is the truth, and because human beings are hard-wired for the truth, the truth imposes. And truth obliges. - Fr. Neuhaus at "First Things"