who is willard milton romney?

the willard milton romney entity, here depicted as the mercurial daemon of alchemical transformation

Join us as we chronicle an American tragedy.

The object of our inquiry: Willard Milton Romney

• the equity sector candidate
• the Citizen Kane of our time
• a Manchurian Candidate writ small, tedious, and dreary
• the Bar Kamtza of our troubled republic
• an aspiring Didius Julianus
• the suicide pill of the political right in particular, and the cultural right in general

Our method:

• look for the obvious
• audi alteram partem (consider every source)
• draw conclusions from only what is publicly available
• begin from the premise that Omnis determinatio est negatio (all determination is negation)

Our vantage ground; we are:

• believers in the rule of law as opposed to the arbitrary wills of men or women (however well intentioned)—strike that, we are lovers of the law in the sense of the Jewish sages or Socrates as depicted by Plato in The Crito
• believers in a strict distinction between state and society, and that the latter is always prior to the former
  
• believers in practical reasoning and the sense of justice that emerges from adversarial discourse, historical struggle, and compromise—hence our love for rhetoric and the rhetorical tradition
• social conservatives (we prefer the term cultural conservatives)
• radical traditionalists (we are: observant Jews, hermetic practitioners); hence, we love the law insofar as it extends from custom, tradition, precedent, social negotiation etc.

NOTA: You will find nothing about Mormons, Mormonism, or about Romney’s alleged Mormonism in this web log. Nothing. Not a single word. Nor will you find a single link. And we summarily delete all comments and trackbacks that admit of Mormonism as a theme or an issue.We have nothing but the deepest and profoundest respect for the Mormon tradition. So Romney’s alleged Mormonism is simply not an issue for us. Our issues are with Romney, Romney the person, Romney the candidate, and not with Romney’s faith tradition.

Update 12.06.07: We still respect the Mormon tradition. But Romney himself has made his Mormon confession an issue—see here.

yours &c.
gilad dotan, phd