First off, I agree exactly with Pete’s criticism of those who criticize the Republican base. If the criticism is from the WSJ point of view that the Republican party should be all about cutting taxes on job creators and deregulating and dissing citizens and citizenship through our immigration policy and abandoning all the relational concerns of social conservatives, then God bless the base. This criticism comes mainly from the libertarian/oligarchic donors. And sad to say, Jeb seems to be too responsive to it. It is not a ticket, for one thing, to ride to victory. Jeb needs to start following his heart more than the money.

Here’s the kind of balance I believe in: I’m good with Christmas being both a season holiday that unites all Americans without exception and a religious holiday about personal redemption through God really becoming man. I saw that balance on the country-music Christmas show I saw on one of the networks — half seasonal and half religious tunes. The latter featured a superbly soulful performance by the underrated Carey Underwood and an Appalachian spin on Go Tell It on the Mountain by Sarah Evans. The network NBC show about lighting the Rockefeller tree was 100 percent secular and 100 percent trivial, although Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett do make a very tuneful combination. I just got an e-mail from a conservative living at the end of history in Santa Barbara, and he reports that it’s just depressing to have a holiday season with no religious overtones — no crèches and such — anywhere, even in front of churches. He also reports on the virtually complete absence of volunteerism and the practice of the virtue of charity in paradise. Everyone comes as close as possible to living the unobsessive, self-indulgent life that Marx strangely called communism, which means, ironically, that everything costs something — everything sells, in fact, for market value.

Conservatives these days are about restoring balance to an America distorted by the indiscriminate application in everyday life of the high principles of the libertarians and those of the politically correct (which aren’t as different as you might think). Surely it is an offense against diversity for the true meaning of Christmas to take too much of a hit at the altar of diversity. That means that Ayn Rand’s celebratory affirmation of Christmas as an orgy of commercial excess prevails way too absolutely. Because I’m fair and balanced, I’m not saying that Christmas in America shouldn’t have a strong commercial component, but the greatness of our country used to be our relatively unreserved affirmation of public (meaning, to begin with, in the marketplace) displays of diverse — but only somewhat diverse — religious lifestyles. Without some common appreciation of the “true meaning,” the festivities have no particular reason for being festive.