"Great hearts, my dear master, should be patient in misfortune as well as joyful in prosperity." - Sancho's words of consolation to Don Quixote.
Ever since the extremely close presidential election in 2000, it had been clear that some Democrats and Liberals have collectively lost perspective, appearing to more concerned about threats they perceive from President George W. Bush than international terrorism. Now it would be an exaggeration to suggest that all Liberals ail from such a dysfunctional perspective, but the affliction is more common than one would ordinarily expect. Apparently, this "mania" is not a recent phenomenon, but appears to have be an ongoing problem among Liberals, at least as documented by William F. Buckley, Jr.
In 1959, Buckley wrote Up From Liberalism and his description of Liberalism seems almost prescient. He wrote, "that in most respects the Liberal ideologists are, like Don Quixote, wholly normal, with fully developed powers of thought, that they see things as they are, and live their lives according to the Word; but that, like Don Quixote, whenever anything touches upon their mania, they become irresponsible. Don Quixote's mania was knight errantry. The Liberals' mania is their ideology."
The Liberals' mania may still be their ideology, but the mania has certainly extended to President Bush. Agree with him or not, empirically George Bush is moderate both in tone and policy. He has instituted tax cuts, but so did Ronald Reagan and Reagan's were more dramatic. He liberated Iraq and Afghanistan in response to perceived threats, but Bill Clinton attacked Bosnia even when all conceded that there was no threat to the United States. Some view the Patriot Act as a frontal assault on civil liberties, but it was passed by 3 to 1 in Congress and any civil liberties issues are trivial compared to the internment of Japanese Americans by Liberal icon Franklin D. Roosevelt or to the deliberate killing of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 by Al Qaeda terrorists. Disagreement on policy is not sufficient to explain the fury against Bush. It has something to do with continual frustration with the 2000 election and it has something to do with cultural animosity of America's elites with the values of Middle America.
This Liberal "mania" is routed in cultural difference, the reaction of people who fancy themselves elites and are frustrated by apparent American backwardness in the hinterlands. Immediately, after the election, the Left was carping about the ``moral issues'' motivation of the Americas, but many simply subscribed to Michael Moore's conviction that Americans, "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet ... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks... We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." Given the number of people who paid money to see Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, one supposes that he has a point. In any case, the persistent insults that the Left lavish on American will not particularly endear them and it may help insure future Republican victories. But the mania is too intoxicating for some and they cannot temper either their thoughts or speech.
