Sigmund Freud sold Western culture a whole lot of snake oil; but he prescribed just the right medicine when he warned about the dangers wrought by denial, the defense mechanism that perversely defends us from truth.

But why thoughts about this particular constant of human nature? Well, because lately denial has been popping up among some Conservative pundits like those prairie dogs kids whack in arcade games.

Consider, for example, Ann Coulter, who announced that in a matchup between John McCain and Hillary Clinton, she would support the more “conservative” Hillary.

Of course, the Coulter example is admittedly weak because arguing that Hillary Clinton is more conservative than John McCain indicates a lapse into madness infinitely more than it points to mere denial  — notwithstanding the fact that John McCain has more than once driven Conservatives crazy.

Therefore, let’s turn our attention to John O’Sullivan, National Review’s Editor at Large, who recently argued that a win by Barack Obama would serve “the conservative interest” because it may well strengthen and stabilize American society, thereby justifying a “(temporary) cost in conservative principles.”

For the sake of argument, let’s concede Mr. O’Sullivan’s first point — even though doing so about one of the Senate’s most Liberal members requires a leap of faith not asked of us since we were asked to believe the cow jumped over the moon.

We are then left with Mr. O’Sullivan’s second point, which is often expressed as “the reasonable and temporary price to be paid when Conservatives sit out the ’08 Election to set things right in 2012, 2016, 2020 …”

But is that price reasonable and temporary in light of the following realities?

Liberals consider the threat posed to Western life and values by Islamo-Fascists as grossly overblown and therefore properly responded to by talk over tea and (only in extremis) dialing 9-1-1.

Liberals regard the decrepitly aged New Deal as not even half a done deal.

Liberals are religiously devoted to Liberal Judicial Activism, the anti-democratic scourge that labors insidiously to render meaningless the power of Washington’s “explicit and authentic act of the whole people.”

The last reality alone reveals the unreasonableness of the “2016 Strategy,” for Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal has it right when he warns that given the likely makeup of the Senate, any Democratic president elected in ’08 stands a good chance of profoundly changing the Supreme Court in a way few of us will live to see reversed.

Returning now to that devil called denial, we must ask, “What truths do tune out, drop out Conservatives deny?”

First, they deny the fundamental truth that there is no perfect human being and thus no perfect politician.

Second, they deny a truth that flows from the preceding one: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Interestingly, those denials point to realities regarding Conservative presidents the aforementioned pundits also appear to deny. For example,

Ronald Reagan responded to the unconscionable sliming of Judge Robert Bork by nominating in his place the 50% Liberal Judicial Activist Anthony Kennedy.

Reagan signed into law a border-security-ignoring illegal immigration “solution” that granted amnesty and a direct “path to citizenship” to 2.5 million illegal aliens.

GW Bush, despite the lessons of Korea and Vietnam, embraced the concept of “limited” war.

GW Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law.

GW Bush could never find his veto pen as a corrupt, profligate Republican Congress spiraled into a deserved oblivion.

GW Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court (until Conservatives forced him to change his mind in favor of a tested Jeffersonian judge).

GW Bush vigorously supported “comprehensive” immigration “reform” that insulted the American people and endangered American society by insisting that the only important issue regarding de facto open borders and a totally unchecked flow of illegal aliens into the nation is this: “They [the illegals] are doing work Americans won’t do.”

Finally, pundits such as Coulter and O’Sullivan ironically deny the truth that today the American people (especially Conservatives) are blessed with the New Media, the most powerful weapon for fighting corruption, anti-democratic stratagems, and political betrayal that has ever existed.

(But even that weapon reminds us of the need for vigor and dedication in political wars. For example, John McCain can promise to end the abomination called earmarks; but he has a snowball’s chance of succeeding without the help of citizens who fight by his side hard and long, without even a hint of taking a “temporary” respite.)

Refusing to give into denial and acknowledging truth, every Conservative should conclude that the demands of morality as well as the realities of human nature and politics give us no other choice than to fight like hell for John McCain and to fight with the same ferocity for or against the policies of a President McCain (or any other president) as principle dictates.

Of course, there are two other options.

On one extreme, we can imitate the slovenly frauds of the Sixties who preached dropping out as an act of moral and intellectual genius.

On the other, we can take as our role models the Democratic Senators who, called to be principled and brave in the Clinton impeachment trial, responded by clawing, kicking, and biting each other in a fight for first position to kiss the arse of their perfect champion.

Copyright by A.J. DiCintio