No matter how bad things seem to get, somewhere else they’re bound to be worse. This lesson has been hammered home after almost a month in the People’s Republic of Oregon. True, Ohio is facing America’s third heaviest tax burden and an economy resembling 1980’s-era Eastern Europe, but it could be worse. It’s also the case that Ohio’s Republican Party was recently swept from power after the least popular governor in history led the state to almost total ruin. At least Ohio’s Republican Party had races to lose this year. Oregon’s political, economic, and social climate is very different from that of Ohio and makes me very glad to be an adopted Ohioan.

Ohio’s economy might be in trouble, but at least the state and local government (as well as large segments of the population) isn’t openly hostile to business. Schumacher Furs & Outerwear, a fixture in downtown Portland since 1895, is preparing for an “evacuation sale” after being chased away with nothing short of torches and pitchforks. The store had faced a year’s worth of protests, trespasses, vandalism, and even bomb threats from animal rights activists and eco-terrorists. In light of this, Gregg Schumacher- who says he is afraid to enter his own store- was told by the city and police to negotiate with those who would shut him down. He isn’t putting up with this, and he shouldn’t have to. Schumacher has said that he is packing up and leaving the city limits for an undisclosed location. The City of Portland’s unwillingness to defend a legitimate business peddling a legal product hardly comes as a surprise to anyone with a familiarity in eco-terrorism. Portland is well known as the Beirut of eco-terrorism, with several organizations, such as the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First!, having substantial bases of operation.

Socially Oregonians are more secular than Ohioans are religious. Oregon is second only to next-door Washington in percentage of people declaring themselves “not religious” at 24%. This is compared with 26% of French who say the same. A poll suggested that around fifteen percent of French citizens attend church regularly. A staggering twelve percent of Oregonians do the same. As you would expect, Oregon is firmly under the yoke of political correctness, “Holiday Trees” and all. Local radio talk show host Lars Larson tried to protest this with a Christmas Cross he would place in Pioneer Courthouse Square last year. This plan was abandoned when the tolerant and inclusive citizens of Portland made threats against the cross and Larson himself. At this rate Oregon will join Albania and China as the only governments in the world to declare themselves officially atheist.

Oregon is also marching down the road of becoming a one-party state. Ohio Republicans were chased out of the statewide offices last November, but at least they had races to lose. The only Republican to win a statewide race this century is Oregon’s Junior Senator Gordon Smith. Rumor has it he might not last much longer either, facing re-election in 2008. Unbelievably, Oregon- already a solid navy- is getting even bluer. The GOP lost the State Senate in 2002 and the State House in November, giving Democrats complete control of the state. Even abandoning social and economic conservatism hasn’t improved the GOP’s fortunes. Portland’s own Ron Saxton, a self-described moderate, was crushed in his bid for the Governorship last month. I believe Ohio can be saved with a little ingenuity and a few big ideas on the part of the ORP. My native Oregon, however, has been a lost cause for as long as I can remember. The state can rot in the hell their residents don’t believe in.

Neoconservatives today are mourning the recent loss of one of the architects of their movement, Jeane Kirkpatrick, who passed away Thursday. Kirkpatrick was seen as an American Thatcher who greatly shaped foreign policy in America, particularly as United States Ambassador to the United Nations during the Reagan years (the first woman to hold the position). She authored the Kirkpatrick Doctrine as a means to deal with communism and totalitarian regimes. She more recently called on the United States to declare war on the entire Islamic terrorist network following the September 11 attacks. Perhaps most notably, she described Democrats as they were in 1984 and as they still are: “San Francisco Democrats” who “blame America first.”

In many ways, Kirkpatrick was a pioneer in the field of foreign policy, especially given the prominent school of thought at the time. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter embraced “détente” with the Soviet Union, just wanting to co-exist and get along. Ronald Reagan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, on the other hand, saw things as they were, not as beltway insiders or eastern establishment intellectuals would have liked them to have been. They called the Soviet Union an evil empire because it was. They sought to undermine communism where it existed and repel it where it did not. They didn’t want to just get along with Soviet communism, they wanted to defeat it, and through their resolve and determination, they succeeded. Perhaps more remarkably, they succeeded in spite of the best efforts of a Democrat Congress who opposed every move they made and threw every conceivable obstacle in their way.

At the 1984 Republican National Convention, Kirkpatrick called out her fellow lifelong Democrats on their recent foreign policy follies and their fundamental shift from the ideals of Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. Indeed, her views on foreign policy and liberalism ring true today. Foreign policy matters- in her time the Soviet Union, in 2006 Islamic terrorism- are central to the freedom, prosperity, and yes, the survival of the United States. Today, just as they were in 1984, Democrats are offering the wrong policies. Democrats wanted détente, nuclear freeze, and peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. Today, they want an immediate pullout from Iraq (a strategy even the recently commissioned Iraq Study Group has debunked) and negotiations with Iran, Syria, and North Korea. By the way, Iran is that country that recently convened a conference to determine whether or not the Holocaust occurred. Kirkpatrick described Democrats not as behaving like hawks or even doves but like ostriches, thinking they would be safe from the world’s problems by simply hiding their heads in the sand.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was one of the first influential neoconservatives along with Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Irving Kristol who bolted from their ideological backgrounds and put American interests ahead of partisan ones. She in fact held something in common with the President she worked for: the Democratic Party left them, not vice-versa. Maybe what the Democrats need are more conservative (or at least clear-thinking) members who realize that fundamentalist, blood-thirsty Muslim terrorists are America’s enemy, not George Bush. Maybe they need more Zell Millers who vote for the interests of Americans fearful of additional terrorist attacks instead of unionized federal airport screeners concerned a 40 hour work week might be too strenuous. How appropriate that Kirkpatrick should have called this new batch of loony liberals “San Francisco Democrats.” Now we get to see what happens when we make one of them Speaker.