The closest I've come to seeing a critter this size out in the wild is the herd of elk who live up above our little ranch on the Mesa. (Of course, I see a domesticated critter this size every morning when I go down to the barn to feed my Percheron horse Toby.) One Christmas, when we were up on the mesa getting our Christmas tree, a few elk soared over the barbed wire fence right in front of our eyes and bounded off into the wilderness. It made our spirits all soar, complete with four impossibly long legs and rugged hooves tucked up neatly beneath as we cleared the wire, to see them.

I know some people who visit my neck of the woods from large cities, where people live all piled up on top of each other (and I did my 2+ year stint in the Back Bay of Boston, right there on Beacon Street and decided it wasn't my cup of tea), feel some discomfort, even some fear in the face of the big landscapes that characterize a western state like New Mexico.

I wonder if that's the same kind of feeling that makes people expect the government to take care of them? And do they understand what they are giving up?

Republicans Rediscover Idealism. So I was surprised that instead of eulogizing personal freedom and capitalism, as was done in Denver, Huckabee praised these ideals as the pillars of Republican philosophy. He offered a tangible distinction (rhetorically, at least) between his party and those who derive power from victimhood and dependency.

"I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich," Huckabee said. "I'm a Republican because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me." Huckabee went on to quote Abraham Lincoln, who never said: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."

This maxim (delivered by Gerald Ford rather than the acutely romantic Honest Abe) would be a brilliant Republican slogan this year, certainly an improvement over "Country First" -- which conjures up, for me, nightmares of a local commissar demanding I dig wells for the common good. Read it all.