On the Left

What a rant! I was surfing over at Bill Hobbs site, and found this in comments by John Blake.

These ventings are so totally lacking in substance, so absurdly without logic or any sense of political give-and-take, that one has to conclude: The Left has lost it. Outwardly normal, educated, functional intelligences have succumbed to a bi-polar disorder rooted in narcissism that now borders on megalomania. These people exhibit true psycho-pathological behaviour marked by paranoia, raging obsession, self-identification with "mass movement." They are Eric Hoffer's "True Believers", T.S. Eliot's "hollow men"; Yeats warned against them, saying "an intellectual hatred is the worst."

You cannot argue with these people; and yet, they stand for nothing. Any suggestion that they propose alternatives, or acknowledge that "9/11 mattered", is met with vile obscenties, choking rage. Whence cometh this descent to idiotarian repugnance? I think it's because their phony little elitism is threatened-- the world has changed. Their extreme reaction seems a juvenile-regression syndrome, incapable of distinguishing wishfulness from adult reality. For anyone who has not experienced these people in person, meeting one will come as a surprise. They are hateful, malignant, totally unprincipled. They admire Castro and Saddam. They will advance literally any cause, if it contravenes bedrock American
principles of civil liberties, free-market enterprise, self-defense.
Posted by: John Blake at December 4, 2005 05:36 PM

Good stuff. While my liberal friends (that is to say, those I actually know either personally or through correspondence) don't sound like raving moonbats, I have noticed a decided trend toward decreasing politeness in the public discourse. Perhaps it is because I routinely go armed. Who knows?

There was precisely one true, died-in-the-wool academic, intellectual liberal that I have run across in my many travels. This one and I attended the same writers group during the 1990's. I could get him started by simply asking questions, much as an attorney does during cross examination, then when the time was right I would show him the error of his arguments through simple interrogation. Quite charmingly, he would throw a temper-tantrum and storm off into the night, slinging invective.

I would then put on my "good ole country boy" routine and apologize to my hostess, claiming that I was just asking questions, trying to make up my own mind.

It was a lot of fun.