Another of those cold windy days when you promise yourself you´ll go out… and then the thought of what it will take to battle the  buses, the  mad motorists, and the wind overcomes you.

I contented myself with sitting on the couch, wrapped up, sipping mate and tapping out a piece on the recent ethics charges levied against Sarah Palin. I didn´t read the charges in any detail. I don´t care to. At this point, it´s clear that every media hack in the country enjoys sticking a knife into her. It´s not pretty.  Since when did small-town flute-playing moms provoke such visceral dislike? I did´t care for Ms. Palin as a candidate for Veep myself. But she´s no worse than many others. And if you think she had no experience,  then what about….oh well, never mind.

Sotomayor is another topic not worth bothering about. The whole debate over how to interpret the constitution is so stale I wonder it´s not on sale at a cheap supermarket. Under half-baked products.

Sotomayor is not going to rend the fabric of the nation. That´s already been done. She´ll probably go along in that muddled way that passes for being a ‘thoughtful´justice.

And that´s as it should be.

I´m all for a period of doing what´s been done. And if the only conservation going on is the conservation of liberal achievements, then so be it. Continuity is still a good thing. The settled law of the land is still the settled law of the land.  We´ve suffered from enough revolution- through- the- courts for me to believe that conservatives should adopt the same judicial activisim in turn.

Libertarians sometimes like to talk about radical capitalism. But to me, capitalism isn´t radical in its essence. It´s conservative. What it conserves is time. The frequent observation that capitalism ¨speeds” up time (you´ll find it in much modern political theory) is true enough at one level. But at another level, capitalism is backward-looking, not just forward looking. It concretizes our past actions, preserves them.

There are many libertarians who like to call  themselves radicals, but I´m not one of them. I like to call myself a tory-bohemian. A traditionalist as to forms. An agnostic and skeptic as to substance.

This makes me fond of style…convention.  Style is not everything, but it´s more than the left realizes. Style is our conversation with the past.

The past is important to me. Very important. And the kind of capitalism that uproots the past and overturns everything in its path is only one face of capitalism — it´s corporatism, gigantism – the out growth of state intervention.

I like to think that  without massive state intervention, capitalism would emerge as something entirely different.

To return to Sotomayor. The court´s been political for decades. Pretending this is something new and not to be tolerated is simply silly. Let the courts go where they wish.

Pat Buchanan gained nothing by opposing Sotomayor for being an activist. I saw him debate Rachel Maddow on her show,  and Maddow cleverly limited her argument to repeating that 108 out of 110 Supreme Court justices had been white males. She knew that one fact was enough.

And she´s right. Demographics have changed, and the court is expected to reflect demographics. Buchanan argued that justices are supposed to be picked for their mastery of legal analysis.  But anyone who´s read case law knows how convoluted the arguments are.  They´re mostly political…and sophistical. And often bogus.

So, arguing for some kind of mastery of bogus ¨legal science¨ isn´t nearly as effective as arguing for what the population wants. And Rachel Maddow is a smart cookie who knows how to argue effectively. It´s as simple as that.

Conservatives would do better to focus on society and forget the courts.