[Eccl 10:2]

VDH nails it again. Calls out all the phoniness in Liberalism.

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP

[SkyDancer]

In a book I read by him he called Curtis LeMay a war criminal for his bombing campaign on Japan during WWII. I have no use for him.

[Piranha]

Victor seems to have reconciled himself to his fate. I often felt bad for him, in that he came from a working class background and made it to the hallowed groves of high-level academia, only to reach his full strength at a time when he has to spend so much of his brainpower understanding a crude Chicago thug rather than intellectual abstractions.

Here I think he has embraced his situation, at long last.

[razorback-bert]

ginp

[RightOnline]

Excellent. Bump.

[Billthedrill]

One of VDH's best, and thanks for posting. The full depth of media complicity in this is illustrated very clearly here:

In 2004, the media’s “jobless recovery” was the description of George W. Bush’s 5.4% unemployment rate. “It’s the economy, stupid” referred to George H.W. Bush’s 1992 annual 3.3-4% GDP growth rate. “Unpatriotic” was W’s $4 trillion in borrowing in eight years, not $5 trillion in three. If Obama right now had 5.4% unemployment, 3.4% economic growth, and a budget deficit of about $400 billion, what would the media call it...?

They'd be screeching and swooning like adolescent girls over a pimply pop star; in short, nothing much would change at all. And it gets worse, much worse, because that same tendency for uncritical, even callow, admiration for a manufactured fantasy is behind the admiration for things European that leads the average progressive to gush "why can't we be more like the Europeans" in the same tone we usually hear marriage proposals to the likes of Justin Bieber.

We can't, because it would be a particularly stupid thing to do. And the level of stubborn denial of this that exists in the academic fools 0bama has placed in some of the highest offices of the land is a testament to nothing more than their refusal to grow up politically and ideologically.

In short, liberalism does not work, contrary as it is to human nature...statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the West—both serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector. That it is not sustainable does not mean that it will not cause havoc as it totters and collapses.

It would be a rather satisfying thing to watch except for the inconvenient fact that we won't be viewing from afar but underneath the rubble. Which is, actually, not a bad working description of our current position with the media desperately piping "Happy days are here again" loudly enough to swoozle the poor bastards who have been buried. "It's not so bad," we hear, "a ton of rock is nothing compared to the layer of dust we endured under Bush." Yeah, right.

But the ridiculous pretension of the 0bama administration are, as VDH points out, a symptom rather than the systemic problem, although this is like saying that an exploding abdomen is a symptom of a deeper medical problem. At some point it doesn't matter. The Van Jones, Elizabeth Warren types are polyps in the festering colon of modern progressive politics but enough of them can kill you.

That said, I do look forward to the shrieking that will ensue when this pack of degreed illiterates is finally shown the door, to assume the dignity of a former functionary who is safe in the knowledge that his media co-conspirators will cover for him, even regale him with an occasional Nobel Peace Prize. These will rejoin their respective well-remunerated faculties to produce yet another wave of intellectual weeds should the American people be fortunate enough to take VDH's booster shot against idiot liberalism. I just hope it takes.

[Jeff Chandler]

It’s odd. When I hear VDH on the Hugh Hewitt show, I can’t get enough of his brilliance. When I read his essays, they seem rambling.

[NonValueAdded]

depressing because it is so right

[Aevery_Freeman]

I like VDH because he is usually calm and intellectual in his critiques - this was scathing, brutal and spot-on.

My wife says it's because of the full moon!

[ImpBill]

Perhaps one of the best sentences I have read in a long time -

"... statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the West—both serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector."

[Army Air Corps]

Bookmark.

[Lancey Howard]

"Max Power. He's the man!"

"So... How did you come up with the name, 'Max Power'"?
"I don't know... (shrug) ...I saw it on a hair dryer."

[onedoug]

Great article.

[Rummyfan]

For about three years I have been monotonously suggesting that we were once again in a 1977-1979 Carteresque era, as Obama systematically trashed his predecessor’s policies, denounced “exceptionalism” and “unilateralism,” gave soaring narcissistic sermons on his/our new morality abroad, redefined both allies and enemies as morally equivalent neutrals, and generally suggested that if you were a China, Russia, Middle East, or Latin America, you had justifiable grievances against the pre-Obama U.S., at least during the era when the president was just “three years old.”

Right now, a Carteresque Era would be an improvement!

[Rummyfan]

If I were a state or clique up to no good, and if I thought Obama might not be reelected, in my final window of opportunity, perhaps around September, I might flex my muscles in the former Soviet republics, send another missile over Japan or South Korea, cruise into Taiwanese waters, put some Argentine Marines on the “Malvinas,” seek readjustment in Cyprus and the Aegean, send some rockets into Tel Aviv, dispatch some suicide bombers from Gaza, and let off more missiles from Iran. Not just to make a statement, or to gain more “please don’t” concessions, but because it was my pleasure to do it—if only for the hell of it.

Scary... we could be in for a very interesting fall.

[VTenigma]

Ping

[Roses0508]

BUMP so I can read more closely.