I must cleanse my soul, for I am about to re-tell a glorious, scrumptious tale of someone backpedaling. But in the last few hours, I have had to backpedal too, so let us tell that story first. I tossed in a quart when a pint was the correct dose.

It happens.

Daphne’s place is being buzz-bombed with a charming, snarky liberal gadfly — which also happens. There seems to be a great epidemic of snarky liberals showing lots of “wit” without saying anything anyone, even anyone sympathetic to their side of things, would find too funny. Daphne had her fill of it but, having a heart of gold, decided to play the Three Ghosts to my Ebenezer Scrooge and whispered the words of wisdom to me —

Morgan, I think most of them are truly well meaning and decent people…its just that they’re stupefied. They can’t see the forest for the trees or make the leap from A to Z without a linear finger tracing of every letter. They’ve been taught to think in a particular groove and never bother to poke their heads out for a glimpse of another side of the equation.

The smart liberals are dangerous, but they aren’t in the majority. Unfortunately, they have too many quislings, thanks to the cesspool of mediocrity known as public education.

The latest example of liberal nastiness still plying its aftertaste upon my palette, I was less than completely receptive, although deep down somewhere in the recesses of my subconsciousness I knew the lady was right:

Daphne, with most of what they’re taught that might be true. To a weak and feeble mind, you say “pass a law to raise the minimum wage” and my goodness, who with a decent conscience could ever oppose that?

However, some of it wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of taking root, if there wasn’t some internal nastiness in the host to keep it nourished. I’m speaking here of some of the liberal policies that are, overtly, about trying to destroy things. Like the Boy Scouts for example. I am well aware of the euphemisms — but I call bullshit on the idea that anyone, anywhere, in their heart-of-hearts thinks it will make life more bearable for anyone else if a wedge is driven between the Boy Scouts and the United Way. That right there is a desire to destroy something — period, full stop. That’s a “we’ll show you.”

All of these might start with benign intentions (or, to be more accurate about it, an obsequious effort to showcase decency that possesses only a remote chance of actually being there).

There have been lots of folks who started out liberal, and then when the liberalism inevitably twists and mutates into a perverted form of its former self and starts to become evil, becomes all-concerned about destroying whoever doesn’t fit in — leave. Charlton Heston did it. Ronald Reagan did it. That means anyone can.

But when Napolitano put out that DHS report, the only folks I saw protesting, were the ones who called themselves conservatives. If liberals were really about decency, that would have been the point of an irreversible mass exodus.

Now, I’m not going to completely renounce this. There is much truth in it. But some of it needs to go, or at least, to be polished down. I can’t sit here and say, show me a hundred liberals and I’ll show you a hundred people with dark souls. I can’t even say, show me a hundred liberals that have gotten snarky and mean on someone’s blog, and I’ll show you a hundred mean people. There is an overwhelming temptation to play Let’s-Pretend on that one. But it isn’t true. Falling for a bunch of stupid shit doesn’t make you necessarily stupid, let alone evil. Perhaps less than fully attentive, and perhaps incurious. But that’s about all that can really be said.

The problem really is — there are certain milestones on this short, quick bunny trail between the start of the hike, which is “I’m reading a liberal snot-rag newspaper and believing every single word,” and the final destination which is “I hope Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys fail.” From the one point to the other…from “I think I got both sides of the story when I really didn’t,” to “I can’t believe George W. Bush could have ever done anything right, even by random chance, or Barack Obama can ever make a mistake.” There are gradients between these two extremes; there are degrees of corruption. And that’s important to keep in mind. We should work at keeping it in mind because it’s easy to forget.

The reason it’s easy to forget this, is that the hike isn’t quite so much along a level dirt road, as down a sleep, slippery icy slope. Those of us who’ve been paying attention have seen so many turn to the Dark Side, that it all seems inevitable.

But we should recognize the levels. There is an absolute verticality to them; if you’ve slid (or ascended) past this one, but not that one, then you likewise may be safely assumed to have not hit that-one-or-that-one-or-that-one. So by recognizing them, maybe some of us can save some friends.

And to recognize them, we need to identify them.

So here they are.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number One
What I Call Them: Goo-Gooders.
What They Cannot Understand: The Natural Consequence.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they have compassion.
How to Spot Them: They think Thomas Jefferson had the right idea but they also think Earl Warren had the right idea. The truth of the matter is, if you could invite both of these gentlemen to your dinner table on the same night, plates would be broken.
Where They Go Astray: They tend to think there’s a certain level of pain that should not be felt by anyone without some artificial intervention to make everything better; then they lower that limit as time goes on. It starts out with a legitimate protest against slavery. Next thing you know, everyone has a “human right” to wait five minutes for a bus instead of ten. There’s no limit to how far the pain threshold can be lowered.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Two
What I Call Them: Cutie-Pies.
What They Cannot Understand: Some Cute Things Are Wrong.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They’re cute.
How to Spot Them: All the things they own, from cars, to furniture, to the stuffed animals on their beds, to their pens, notebooks, and party invitations they hand out, are cute, sassy, round wherever possible, and purple.
Where They Go Astray: They start to systematically buy into any and all ideas that can be articulated or displayed more concisely and adorably than their opposites (which as a general rule, are expensive, unworkable, and not only errant, but profoundly embarrassing to anyone who starts to apply some responsible thinking to their content).

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Three
What I Call Them: Pamphlet Readers.
What They Cannot Understand: You Can’t Believe Everything You Read.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they have read something about the issue(s).
How to Spot Them: Having studied up on such neutral and encyclopedic resources as The New York Times, the AARP newsletter, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and e-mails from the chairman of the DNC…they start conversations about politics that it turns out they cannot handle. Because they weren’t expecting their viewpoints to be intelligently challenged, by someone inclined toward and capable of doing so. (More often than not, they recall the conversation later as if the other person started it — which makes them somewhat dangerous.)
Where They Go Astray: It’s the “OJ Simpson Trial” situation. They fail to see someone else might have command of the same facts, and come to a different conclusion about what happened or what should be done about it.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Four
What I Call Them: Secularists.
What They Cannot Understand: That There Just Might Be a God.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they don’t go to church.
How to Spot Them: The “Darwin” fish on the back of their car.
Where They Go Astray: They start to believe that non-believers are morally superior, because they do good things just-because, whereas religious people do the same thing to try to appease a judgmental, omnipowerful being.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Five
What I Call Them: Small-l libertarians.
What They Cannot Understand: Drugs Aren’t Good.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They want to legalize drugs.
How to Spot Them: They really don’t care too much about anything besides legalizing drugs.
Where They Go Astray: They want to legalize drugs.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Six
What I Call Them: Non-Discriminators.
What They Cannot Understand: Men Shouldn’t Be Hooters’ Waitresses.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They are blind to class membership — which isn’t even close to being true.
How to Spot Them: They talk about “laws that end discrimination,” which, when you think about it responsibly for a little while, you can see is some of the purest nonsense.
Where They Go Astray: Simply put, they start discriminating.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Seven
What I Call Them: Nanny-Staters.
What They Cannot Understand: The Nature of Government Makes Self-Restraint Impossible.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they don’t trust “corporations”.
How to Spot Them: They claim the death tax is not a double-tax, using the “it’s the first time that guy saw the money” argument. Also, we always seem to be, as the saying goes, one regulation away from total bliss.
Where They Go Astray: Their arguments start to rest on an unstated premise that government is capable of a balance, a wisdom, and a sense of ethics that is somehow unattainable to anyone who isn’t in government.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Eight
What I Call Them: Peaceniks.
What They Cannot Understand: Sometimes, War is the Answer.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they are dedicated to ending violence and conflict (the violence part may be true, but the conflict part sure as hell isn’t).
How to Spot Them: They refuse to acknowledge any problem in human history that was ever solved by a war.
Where They Go Astray: They start to see themselves as enmeshed in a conflict with imaginary ideological antagonists who actually like war. Much in the same way that liberals who are opposed to pollution disease and hunger, seem to start believing that someone, somewhere, enjoying significant power or numbers, is actually in favor of pollution, disease and hunger.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Nine
What I Call Them: Finger-Pointers.
What They Cannot Understand: Not All Tragedies Have a Villain.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: Their capacity for anger. Typically, they used to be peaceniks, and one day they realized their peacenik-ism left them unfulfilled, and with something they needed to prove.
How to Spot Them: One, and only one, bad guy (or class) for everything about the world they don’t like.
Where They Go Astray: They probably always were astray; they have a thunderhead of frothy rage on hand that finds a convenient lightning-rod in whoever or whatever they’ve identified as the villain. The storm is always there. When the lightning strikes, is the only question, and it’s definitely a “when” and not an “if.” These are crazy, angry people. Keep clear.

Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Ten
What I Call Them: True Believers.
What They Cannot Understand: Liberal Positions Are, or Should Be, “A La Carte”.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: Their devotion.
How to Spot Them: They think convicted murderers have a right to life, but unborn babies don’t.
Where They Go Astray: These people have crossed the fourth milestone on the way to complete insanity. They don’t think anyone with conservative recognition can ever have a good idea, or that anyone with proper liberal credentials can ever have a bad one.

Update 5/22/09: I wasn’t aware of the content of this promo for the new V series until this morning when I saw it on IMAO. FrankJ compares the reptilian aliens to Obama.

When the lady in the trailer says the aliens’ weapon is “devotion” — the same word, coincidentally, I used in the final terrace — this helps to capture how the ten terraces work in concert with each other as parts of a simple machine. Like the threads in a screw, or the teeth on a gear.

You say “I want to run everything. Be devoted to me!” You’ll net yourself very, very few takers. But you carve up the mission into lots of smaller incremental tasks and it’s easy. Now go back over those terraces again. Notice how the very first ones, the ones that invite people to climb aboard the bandwagon for the first time, all have one thing in common: They have to do with the new disciple proving something about himself. He’s compassionate, he’s adorable, he’s informed, he’s a critical thinker. This is the point of the screw that is supposed to pierce the hardwood first.

When you get a person’s ego involved, you can get him to do whatever you want; if you don’t, then you can’t.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

…whose anger, inexplicably, is on the rise still even as their power has now become dictatorial and uncontested. It defies all reason, common sense, rationalization, explanation — this is exactly the flavor of anger normal people might have when they lose control of things. After a slow and steady buildup throughout the last eleven years, the bile now runneth over…and their glorious revolution did nothing to stop its bubbling up, or even to slow it down. Instead, somehow, due to mysterious engimatic factors that will be studied by social scientists for generations, I think — the bubbling accelerated.

I came up with the words. Blogger friend Phil supplied the labor. Now we have a bumper sticker:

Update 5/13/09: As if the point had not quite yet been made…along comes Karol, and look at what she found (hat tip to Conservative Grapevine).

As that cute old adage says, there are two kinds of people in the world; those who divide us all into two kinds of people and those who don’t. Liberals seem to be unable to make up their minds about it. One minute they want to make a health care system and a tax code that will “work for everyone,” the next minute they want to annihilate half of us.

Update: Back on Cinco de Mayo, Amity Shlaes summed this up very well:

In the past, politicians and policy thinkers tended to be magnanimous in victory. They and their friends focused, post- victory, on policy and strategy — not on trashing individuals.

It ought to be especially true this time, given what wonders are befalling the Democrats. Between Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Al Franken in Minnesota, it looks like the Democrats are in the process of making their Senate majority filibuster-proof. Then there’s the president’s new opportunity to mold the Supreme Court, with the resignation of David Souter.

Still, somehow, the magnanimity isn’t there. Indeed, the closer the Democrats get to total power, the nastier the commentators friendly to them have become.

Now to be fair about it, liberals worked just as hard to tell us how much their opponents suck, when the opponents were in power and the liberals were out of it; and although their tactics were childish, there was a certain logic in the strategy.

But, as I’ve said before: I perceive a measurable up-tick in the urgency, the drive, to clue us all in on how much conservatives suck — now that it doesn’t matter. I perceive a certain perpetual-motion device operating on a cyclical current flow. Get the word out that conservatives suck, get more power; get more power, spread the word that conservatives suck to try to get more power.

It seems to be a primal urge, almost a sexual thing. Meanwhile, isn’t there a cockpit at the front of this plane, a place where things have to be done to keep things under control? How come you’re back here in the coach section, Mister Pilot, jabbering away not quite so much about what a wonderful pilot you are, but about how much the other pilot sucks? Who’s flying this thing?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Liberals being angry and nasty, is Item #12 on my list of thirty things I’d like blamed for global warming.

It started in ‘98 when Bill Clinton got in all that trouble, and someone established moveon.org. Isn’t that our record-warm-year lately, 1998? Hmmmm…

But I’m going to have to eliminate that as a possible cause. The mean global is leveling off and going down. Like a lawn dart, some evidence says.

The liberals were voted down in ’04, and they got really mean and nasty and angry about it. It’s those Diebold machines! In 2006 they took over Congress, and got the first woman Speaker of the House out of that deal. Which, somehow, made them even angrier. Then Hillary and Obama competed in ’08 to see who would be the party’s nominee. That made them angry. They couldn’t blame any of it on Republicans, and I always got the impression that made them angrier still.

And now they’ve got everything they want. Both houses of Congress. Their guy in the White House is running auto companies, evaluating “empathy” as a qualification for His Supreme Court picks, and doing all kinds of other things the Constitution either doesn’t say He can do, or explicitly comes out and says He can’t do. They’ve got a Department of Homeland Security defining their ideological opponents as potential terrorists, just for disagreeing with them.

Through it all, their anger becomes more pressurized, hotter, steamier, ripe, rancid, sweating, oozing.

And the mean global temperature goes down. I think it’s time to cross off Potential Cause Number Twelve.

As far as the liberals, I really don’t know how they can get angrier about things. I don’t know if that’s possible. It’s not just a quality thing, it’s quantity too. For the last few years we’ve kind of gotten to the point where “angry liberals” is like a product you can order by the palette. “Yeah Bob? Got a problem down here. We need two truckloads, maybe three, of Angry Liberals and we need ’em pronto! that last case you sent down here got dropped and they exploded.”

I almost wish there was some way to put them in charge of more stuff, so we could find out if even more anger is a do-able deal; it seems the more decisions they’re allowed to make about things, the angrier they get. Is it a parabolic curve that has some cresting point, perhaps? Give them enough authority and eventually the anger level drops back down again? The Senate is almost certain to be filibuster-proof the way things are going. I think we’ve trotted about as far out on the X-axis of that graph, as we can possibly get. Liberals are unchallenged, and their resentment has boiled over at a record high.

Or, as Frank says…

They have their inexperienced president dismantling America both domestically and abroad, so shouldn’t they be unhappy instead of still all unhinged and deranged? I think they realize, though, that them getting power is a freak accident and is just going to lead everyone to really really hating them and trying to throw them into the sea where they will be Aquaman’s problem.

We’re going to hate liberals? Are we allowed to hate liberals? From what I can see, now that the liberals are in charge of things it is they who are allowed to hate everyone else because they’re such cool people…and the rest of us aren’t allowed to hate anything, least of all the liberals, because we’re just not cool enough to run anything. We put them in charge to do their hating.

I know that seems like a rather strange thing to be writing out there…but hey…I’m just calling it out as I see it. If there’s a more sensible way to sum things up, let me know. But these guys are spending a lot more time and energy hating people, than I thought they would as of January 20. I’ve found it all rather surprising, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Malveauxism (n.)

An impetuous utterance, in pursuit of the objective of demonstrating some extreme inner personal decency and extraordinary abundance of compassion that doesn’t really exist — that wishes such a loathsome injury upon a third-party that it immediately betrays the pulsating, rippling, ripening anger and savage, cruel spirit that was supposed to remain hidden.

Named after USA Today columnist Julianne Malveaux, who in 1994 said of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas,

I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease…He is an absolutely reprehensible person.

The true paradox of the Malveauxism is that it is supposed to demonstrate a superlative desire to construct a modern, perfect Utopian society in which no dweller thinks any but the most beneficial thoughts about any other dweller, or for that matter, any other human being. And yet, in their desperation to showcase this desire that doesn’t really exist, they not only cross the line into sadism, but gulp hungrily from that bitter tonic and become drunk on it — making sure they are as visible as possible as they do. The “reprehensible person” line proves this. Malveaux sought to prove her decency as a human being by showcasing exactly how much she detested Clarence Thomas. It is a game of one-upmanship. If you think Clarence Thomas is a “bad” person, you are bested by the fellow who is convinced he is an “awful” person…and Malveaux, in turn, outranks him by using the adjective “reprehensible” and wishing for his premature death. And so their initial objective is ultimately imploded through this silly game of leapfrog.

They seek, not only to become hateful, but to become publicly hateful. So that everyone knows how full of love they are.

The latest example of the Malveauxism is the Sykes incident over the weekend, in which obscure actress and comedienne Wanda Sykes showed off her dedication to the modern Obama-era perfect peace-and-love hope-and-change society by criticizing a certain popular conservative talk show host…

“Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails,’ you’re like, ‘I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.’ He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason,” Sykes said.

“He’s not saying anything differently than what Usama bin Laden is saying,” she continued, before addressing the guest of honor, President Obama. “You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight.”

The crowd groaned, Obama smiled and Sykes may have noticed a little discomfort in the room.

“Too much?” she asked.

But then she piled it on:

“Rush Limbaugh, ‘I hope the country fails’ — I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? … He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.”

Obama joined the crowd in laughing at the crack about Limbaugh’s “kidneys.”

What makes the Malveauxism possible is that liberals don’t really want a more peaceful, tolerant, loving or harmonious society.

They hate. Just as often and just as efficiently as any human being ever has. So dedicated are they to the Two-Minutes Hate of Orwell’s 1984, that in a society that was genuinely stripped of any & all hostile thought, they’d be truly lost.

Had an older relative e-mail me a link to these. Most interesting seeing put into words, for the very first time in my experience, what I’ve seen in act and spirit so many times…especially lately. Especially items #4 and #12.

RULE 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
RULE 2: Never go outside the expertise of your people.
RULE 3: Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
RULE 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
RULE 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
RULE 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
RULE 7: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
RULE 8: Keep the pressure on. Never let up.
RULE 9: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
RULE 10: If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.
RULE 11: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

I’m just teasing the first sentence of each; you have to read the paragraphs to get the full essence. But I am impressed, not so much by what is present, but by what is missing.

Two things.

Intellectuality. It is used, here, solely for the purpose of winning and for no other purpose at all. In all other aspects, the behavior that is dictated by these rules is the behavior of savage animals.

And that brings me to the second thing I see missing: A sense of unity…harmony…symbiosis…coming together to solve common problems. Everything is strategic. And I mean the classic-dictionary, military school meaning of strategic:

Intended to render the enemy incapable of making war, as by the destruction of materials, factories, etc.: a strategic bombing mission.

Against an enemy. So these are twelve rules that, following the fulfillment of the progressive dream of constructing that utopia in which we “all” can live, would have no place anywhere whatsoever.

So these are rules for hard-left types to use when they lack any semblance of culture, civility, intellectuality, and any intent of living in peace or harmony with diverse points of view. You know, those two things are exactly what “progressives” are supposed to support…everlastingly and unconditionally. Well, they don’t support those things all the time.

But the lefty types we know, do support the above twelve rules — pretty much all the time.

This one’s getting a little bit of dust, so I wanted to be sure and snag it. Goldberg:

The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama’s first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.

There’s no denying that this is liberalism’s greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limits of their imaginations.

“The world has changed,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes … [in] traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.”

Right. “Family values” and a “strong foreign policy” belong next to the “free silver” movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.

No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on him that anybody watching might see it differently.

It would be evidence of a tragic psychological malady if it were running rampant throughout the ranks of the people who are not running things.

As things are…it’s just damn frightening.

We have the five short-list successors for Justice Souter profiled on Huffington Post…sixty percent of which are big-nosed butterface white chicks.

Then we have another butterface white chick that’s got the homosexual community all excited, or at least those who purport to be an advocate for said community. Her nose, for the record, is rather svelte.

And then there’s this year’s favorite big-nosed butterface white chick, the one who says the 9/11 hijackers came into our country through Canada, and returning veterans are a security threat.

There is something about decent-looking pretty women that liberals find extremely threatening. And I think the time may have come for the rest of us to comment on it.

What is it with liberals and ugly women? Who is it within their perceived constituency that finds old-fashioned feminine beauty so threatening? Isn’t it possible to find some hardcore lefty chick, one that has a law degree, who gets all excited whenever babies are aborted, wants to make up the law as she goes along, who thinks global warming is a threat but Islamic terrorism is not…but one that looks kind of like Elisabeth Hasselbeck? One that I want to see in Hooters’ uniform, or at least a short skirt? Aren’t they out there? They’re all over the place on Boston Legal reruns.

Seriously: What is this apparent correlation between premature aging and modern liberalism? Obviously, there is a relationship; obviously, it is a persistent, enduring one. And it’s not exclusive to the female variety either. You’ll notice there’s a couple of dudes in that line-up and they have faces-made-fer-radio too. Is it kind of like that thing the Dark Side was doing to the Emperor’s face? Pardon me, I realize this is all less than delicate…but you have to admit, if I didn’t at least get curious about it, let alone ask the questions — there’s have to be something terribly wrong with me. It’s the track record, going all the way back to Geraldine Ferraro. It’s just too consistent and too striking.

Greg Mitchell is a very silly man. Over the course of six years, he’s seen with his own two eyes how incredibly wrong the prevailing sentiment of “everyone” can be, and he’s decided to write about it.

The lesson he takes from it?

“Everyone” was wrong back then…but they’re absolutely correct now.

I think that’s a fair summary of his article. So tell me — how do people like this get dressed in the morning and start walking around?

On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today Op-Ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, exactly six years ago, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq — with the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him in the war’s greatest photo op.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”

PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a — on a carrier landing.”

Bob Schieffer on CBS said: “As far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time.” His guest, Joe Klein, responded: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me.”

Everyone agreed the Democrats and antiwar critics were now on the run.

He then lunges in for the kill: The death toll on that date was such-and-such, and in the years since then it went up to so-and-so. Ergo, mission-not-accomplished.

Idiot.

What he has seen — what we all have seen — is a story as old as mankind itself. Tough, resourceful and strong warriors work in concert with each other, sacrificing their very lives to destroy something so that something else can be built on top of the ashes, that otherwise could not have been.

If the world spun sanely upon its axis, every May 1 would be a “Mission Accomplished” day and the banner would be hung in miniature form from every storefront, every lamppost, every house, with not a tincture of sarcasm or pejorative shadowing behind it. The troops were given a mission, they achieved it, and their commander thought it would be a good idea to hang up a banner and make them feel good.

The Hardcore MoveOn Left thinks they’ve metastasized this into a symbol of incompetence, by beating us over the head for six years with their absurd doctrine: Whatever isn’t free isn’t worth having. Nothing is “accomplished” anywhere if it involves sacrifice. Sacrifice is for suckers and losers. Nothing, anywhere, is available to sacrifice for anything else…except maybe the life of an unborn baby, America’s military readiness, and perhaps the careers of a few straight white guys. All other things are so sacred that they cannot be placed into marginal jeopardy — let alone sacrificed for any prize, no matter how precious that prize may be, or the other things that would depend on it.

That’s the message, apparently. Because that is the only mindset by which it makes any sense whatsoever to declare the mission something-besides-accomplished, on Mission Accomplished day. If you acknowledge even for a moment that there might be something heroic or noble about a soldier laying down his or her life for the success of a mission, whatever that mission might be, then the “Mission Accomplished” banner made perfect sense back then, does so now, and anyone heckling it in any way is a traitor.

So The Hard Left doesn’t believe in any of that.

They think missions are for suckers. People, inside the military or outside of it, aren’t really supposed to accomplish anything. (Except, perhaps, win elections, if they’re democrats.) Sacrificing your own life to make a mission accomplished, is unworthy of a banner, and in fact might very well make you a something of a schmuck, or a loser.

And they’re desperate to get the word out, and make sure everyone knows they feel that way.

Well, mission accomplished.

Today is April 26, 2009; my Things That Inexplicably Make Liberals Laugh and Smile list has just been modified, to include the following.

The pattern that seems to emerge, is that when you hear a liberal politician giggle you should worry about things. A whole lot.

Dignitaries and ordinary-folks on the political left, are known to laugh and smile…

1. When meeting dictators who are known to oppress the basic rights of their people;
2. When talking about hostage crises that involve pirates;
3. When spending good taxpayer money on worthless “toxic assets” to bail out the banks;
4. When talking about how unpopular the auto bailout is;
5. When portending severe injury, or doom, to all life on the planet due to global climate change;
6. When attending ceremonies that “mark” (not celebrate) the <n>thousandth casualty in Iraq.

I have yet to understand what they think is so darned funny. This is one of those mysteries of life I doubt I’ll ever be able to figure out…

There are two kinds of liberals, I’ve noticed: The kind that demand answers out of you for questions that are of convenience to them, and then do everything they can to make damn sure you can’t get a full sentence out. Blah, blah blah, blahblahblah, blah blah blah blah blah. Talking point talking point talking point talking point. They seem to think it’s a contest regarding who can get the most words out in the shortest amount of time.

And then there is the kind that learned just enough about logical fallacies to attach labels to things, often incorrectly. You point out they’re using questionable logic and they say you’re using an “ad hom.” You recite a list of things liberals seem not to want anyone to be able to do, and they call it “begging the question.” Their college professor, you see, has taught them these magic phrases they get to use when they’re backed into a corner and just want out. They labor under a misconception that these tags are interchangeable; it works like “Shazam!” or something.

Neo-neocon, from here on in, is my candidate to deal with that second type of liberal. For reasons that the picture below should make abundantly clear…

Well done!

Regarding the former type…well, that’s far more common. Ultimately, right now, it comes down to reminding them that this is a discussion about what ideas actually work, and with regard to theirs, since their folks are the ones in charge — sadly, just waiting.

Nobody reads this blog…certainly not those kollege kids on FARK, they’re just way too smart.

So don’t tell them I submitted this, whatever you do. It’ll get in the way of that…that…you know, it’s Friday night, I don’t even want to think about what they’re doing, while they log in with their FARK accounts and yell “Shut Up!” and “Out The Submitter!” It’s got something to do with hitting the “refresh” button on the web page every few minutes and debating with conserva telling non-liberals how stupid they are, whatever it is. Quantity of alcohol, and quality, to be determined by the “tuition-and-textbook” budget.

The great tragedy here is that the meanings of “gullible” and “skeptical” have been switched around — a perfect 180-degree angle, as if with a surgical-precision instrument. I wouldn’t dread what’s coming nearly as much, if the cream of tomorrow’s leaders showed off for each other clinging to the same tired old ideas, ideas far older than their teeth…and irreversibly infected with CBTA with regard to the newer ideas…if only they admitted that this is what they’re all about.

But they cling to the tired old ideas, never once re-evaluating them. And dismiss anything new, before they even examine it to a cursory detail. And show off for each other as they do it. Then, when they’re done, they pat themselves & each other on the back for being “open-minded” and “thinking for themselves” as they open another bottle of Jagermeister.

A few years down the road — and that’s your boss. Filling out your reviews, deciding based on which testicle itches that morning whether your name is on “retention bonus, whatever it takes,” or the “that asshole’s making photocopies until he quits” list.

So don’t laugh too hard.

Update: Still lots of activity but it’s degenerated into three things. Calling each other morons over comparisons between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide; uploading pictures of nice looking women not wearing too much by way of clothes; telling me to out myself and/or to shut up.

I have unkind feelings toward 67% of those.

I swear, it’s just like having an aquarium. Except it doesn’t take up quite as much room, the fish are actually entertaining, and there’s no fish shit to be cleaned out twice a week.

Update: Forgot to go back and link the article itself. There were so many comments within just a few minutes, I thought I’d check back & see if it would “go green” which means no TOTALFARK membership needed to read it…and therefore to open the linked article…I labored under no delusion that this was a likelihood, but I forgot to do the necessary housekeeping.

Your linked article is here. Quite good, although the real entertainment is those drunken college kids in the thread I can’t show you.

101 Freedoms and Rights the Progressive Left Doesn’t Want You to Have
:
1. The Freedom to keep what you earn and spend it as you please.
2. The Freedom to take risks, and live with the consequences.
3. The Right to participate in the political process by donating money to causes you support (like Proposition 8 in California) without being harassed by radicals
4. The Freedom to work in a shop without belonging to a union.
5. The Freedom to use a secret ballot when voting to unionize.

Et cetera.

Hat tip for that one to Moonbattery.

Thanks to Gerard for pointing out my error.

Making the rounds this week: The Roots of Liberal Condescension, from the Claremont Institute.

Thus, if patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, snobbery is the last refuge of the liberal arts major. The striver may wind up with the bigger house, better car, and nicer vacations, but the very meretriciousness of these aspirations confirms the liberal arts major’s belief in the striver’s inferior taste and barren inner life. Conspicuous consumption advertises not the wealth but the cluelessness of the consumer who acquires to flaunt. It has been supplanted by conspicuous disdain for conspicuous consumption. The Toyota Prius is a testament to its driver’s virtue, not a mark of his prosperity. Its distinctive homeliness has made it a hit, at a time when Honda has cancelled production of the hybrid version of the Accord: it turned out nobody wanted to buy a hybrid that was indistinguishable from an iceberg-melting V-6.

To complement it: Liberals and Conservatives Hold Different Moral Foundations.

The research, published in the May 2009 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests that liberals consistently identify with two sets of moral foundations — those that emphasize harm (harm/care) and fairness (fairness/reciprocity). Conservatives, on the other hand, consistently used all five sets of moral foundations more equally.

“In all four studies we found that liberals showed evidence of a morality based primarily on the individualizing foundations, whereas conservatives showed a more even distribution of values, virtues, and concerns,” noted the researchers who were led by Jesse Graham at the University of Virginia.

The harm/care foundation, according to the researchers, reflects the “widespread human concern about caring, nurturing, and protecting vulnerable individuals from harm,” while the fairness-reciprocity foundation is concerned primarily with fairness, reciprocity and justice.

The other three foundations measured by the researchers included ingroup/loyalty (virtues associated with loyalty, patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group’s greater good), authority/respect (virtues associated with obedience and respect for authority, leadership and protection), and purity/sanctity (virtues associated with religion, hygiene and marking off a group’s cultural boundaries).

In four separate experiments that included more than 12,000 participants from across the United States, researchers found consistent support that people who self-identified themselves as holding “liberal” political views were more likely to emphasize the importance of the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations. Conservatives, on the other hand, identified more equally with all five foundations.

This may be the repair of an egregious mistake committed about a year and a half ago: Brains of Liberals, Conservatives May Work Differently, plainly put out by some dedicated liberals who’d missed some of life’s more important lessons.

The work, to be reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, grew out of decades of previous research suggesting that political orientation is linked to certain personality traits or styles of thinking. A review of that research published in 2003 found that conservatives tend to be more rigid and closed-minded, less tolerant of ambiguity and less open to new experiences. Some of the traits associated with conservatives in that review were decidedly unflattering, including fear, aggression and tolerance of inequality.

What an embarrassment that was. Rather like the blonde protesting that she cannot write dates on her tupperware because the damn things won’t fit in the typewriter…you moron. Anybody of moderate disposition and sound mind, who’s watched intelligent conservatives and liberals go at it, understands it implicitly: Conservatives comprehend history and are ready to write off ideas demonstrated by history to be bad. Liberals, because of a charitable nature, lack of attention to detail, faulty memory, perhaps all three — wanna give it another go. History always began yesterday.

My take on it overall?

Liberals are choreographers. They have these expectations of how people around them, within line-of-sight as well as outside of it, will be doing their dancing. They are grown-up versions of the girls who played with dolls too much, and the boys who didn’t play with their flesh-and-blood friends nearly enough. There’s always this script about what the other person is going to do. Because they have these expectations, they have visions…and because they have these visions, to the weak-of-mind, they sometimes appear to be stronger.

Trouble is, they count on these visions coming to fruition. These plans they have, they depend on it.

Employers will keep hiring after we make it unworkable and exorbitant, in all kinds of ways, to hire people.

As soon as we dispose of our nuclear weapons, that nutbag over there will dispose of his.

People “hate” our country because we “torture,” so if we stop doing it they’ll like us moar-better.

If we stop emitting carbon, the earth will cool down again.

Note: It is exceptionally rare you will hear of a liberal actually saying any of this. Instead, it is much more common for them to say negative things about the status quo: Employers won’t hire people because they’re greedy, that nutbag has nukes because we’ve got ’em, people hate us because we torture, the earth is warming because we’ve emitted.

It is a bandwagon upon which people can hop, when at heart they long to destroy things, and desire to conceal themselves under the disguise of a builder. All things that the liberal wishes to preserve, are, in some ways, destructive agents; all things the liberal wishes to destroy, exist either to build things, or to destroy something that so that something else can be preserved or built. The long-term vision is always that something beneficial or admirable is to be diminished.