I am well-known as a critic of Barack Obama. While Republican and even pro-life leaders were still mesmerized by the phony rhetoric of his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, I looked at the facts and pronounced him a Marxist hardliner whose extremist position on child-murder led him to oppose a bill that sought to end the practice of infanticide in Illinois hospitals. Long before prominent neocons happily took tea and crumpets with him after his 2008 election victory, I pointed to the strategic incompetence of his approach to national security and the encouragement it would give to terrorists and other enemies of the American people. Though today many talk about the moral and economic devastation his national socialist policies are preparing for the American way of life, some of those same voices characterized me as intemperate right after his election when I stated flatly that he had to be stopped, or he would destroy the country.

Why have I been willing to warn of that danger when others were silent, to be clear about the consequences when others were purblind and confused, to foresee the implied devastation when others saw business as usual? I looked at the facts and based my statements on what I saw. I reasoned from those facts as accurately as I could and stood by the conclusions thus warranted. For a while I had little company. Today, however, it's popular to stand against Obama's socialist agenda; his irresponsible frenzy of spending and borrowing; his predilection for shameful apology and appeasement of the enemies of liberty; his deep commitment to approaches that brush aside respect for the consent of the people to make and implement policy in the secret partisan conclaves characteristic of party dictatorships.

Which is preferable – a night watchman who sees the enemy, recognizes the danger and sounds the warning while they are still outside the walls (risking the ire of those who resent being roused from sleep), or one who waits until they have taken the walls, overcome the watch and begun despoiling the treasury to recruit new strength? The answer is obvious to all but those who have been silent when it was their duty to speak. Their timidity made them love the silence. Their vanity makes them hate and resent the ones whose early warnings mark their silence for what it is – incompetence, cowardice or treacherous calculation.

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On Tuesday in Massachusetts Obama suffered an important setback. Like the check Napoleon met with at Eylau, it signals the fact of his vulnerability. As a matter of fact this is a good thing for the cause of constitutional liberty. Yet the Russian emperor whose forces were responsible for the dogged resistance that disappointed Napoleon's effort to consolidate sole sway over Europe was, in his own right, as much of a tyrant as the upstart he faced. A few months later he signed the Treaty of Tilsit, which "began an alliance between the two empires which rendered the rest of continental Europe almost powerless."

The old saw declares that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The more prudent version adds a caveat: "except when he's not."

Scott Brown rode to victory on a cresting wave of opposition to Obama's health-care takeover and the highhanded bully-boy tactics the Democrat leaders in Congress are using to force it on a reluctant American people. Yet, as I noted in a blog posting the day after his win, conservatives working to restore constitution freedom can cheer for Obama's defeat, but take no cheer from Brown's victory because he is a typical RINO (Republican-in-name-only) who:

• has no differences in principle with the socialist-minded Democrats;
  
  
• embraces the substance of Obama's socialist agenda, but "opposes" Obama by criticizing his implementation of socialism, especially when it comes to fiscal matters;
  
  
• agrees in principle with the Democrats on the fundamental issues of justice and morality but employs the deceptive rhetoric of personal opinion to evade the questions of public law and policy they involve. Such issues include child-murder and other abrogations of the unalienable right to life, as well as the rejection of the God-endowed rights of the natural family.

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In another posting, I presented the facts and reasoning that led me to this conclusion. I hope that readers caught up in the post-election euphoria being encouraged by the RINO clique now in control of the national GOP's party line will take the time to read this article (and perhaps a relevant follow-up to it) before drawing their ad hominem swords to lop off my head (rhetorically speaking, of course).

I battle against Obama for the cause of constitutional liberty. But it makes no sense to get so caught up in the battle that we forget the cause. There's no harm in rejoicing in Obama's Massachusetts setback, so long as we remember that when two of our opponents fight, it's better for us if neither gains strength from the victory. I at least will do my best to make sure that blind allegiance to a party label doesn't prevent sincere conservative partisans of liberty from understanding that. As in the past, I will for a while be riddled with friendly fire. Faith helps me to trust that true facts will again be proof against it.