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couple weeks after the election, all is good for the Libs. They won; we lost, and by a margin beyond even ACORN’s ability to produce. Given their emotional bent, it’s not surprising they’re crowing as if this were a permanent mandate, as Ben Cohen wrote yesterday in The Daily Banter:

With a new political era looming, veterans of the old political arena will scramble to redefine themselves in order to make a living. Politicians, media commentators and analysts may be ill equipped to deal with the changing electorate, increased power of the blogosphere and massive discontent with the status quo. Who will survive in the modern epoch?

He lists 10 conservative voices that he says should not: William Kristol, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Dick Morris, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, Alan Greenspan, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and (big surprise here) George W. Bush.

With most of the names, I can’t say I’m too outraged, really. I started reading the piece prepared to get in a snit, but in the end, you have to admit that if you take a high profile and lose, you’ve opened yourself to criticism. And it’s not just these 10; it’s’ the entire GOP. We should all go away – but only to figure out how to come back stronger.

The pundits Cohen listed – Kristol, Malkin, Morris, O’Reilly and Hannity – are going to have to prove their staying power in the Obama era. What Cohen fails to acknowledge, however, is that the Obama era is just beginning, and all the folks who sided up against him still may ultimately be proven right.

Kristol is condemned, for example, because of his position on the war. But Obama’s not done with the war yet, and neither is al-Qaeda, Iran or Iraq. The question now isn’t what Kristol and other conservatives got right or wrong about Bush’s approach to the war; it’s whether Obama’s position is right or not, and we need people beside his fawning acolytes to consider that question. Whether it will be Kristol or not depends on the market.

The same goes for all the other pundits. Of the bunch, I think Hannity has the most to answer for, since he led the charge against Obama’s radical friends. If Obama does end up governing like a Centrist, Hannity will look the hysteric – not because of his concern, but because of the tenor of his concern.

The other group Cohen lists is politicians – Palin, Cheney, Romney and Bush. Throw Greenspan in this group too.

He dismisses a governor who’s fought corruption, crossed the aisle and garnered incredible favorables in her home state with:

Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is the poster child of vacuous Republican imagery – hollow, loud and crass with no discernable talents other than an ability to attract stupid middle American house wives.

With Stevens losing his Senate seat, Palin will serve out her term and it’s up to her to put Cohen in a position where people will be calling for him to go away. Palin does have some loudness and crassness about her that served her well in the election but probably will have to be moderated with clearer statements of her position if she is to succeed. It’s not Cohen’s call; Palin resonates with the GOP, and if they want her and she’s capable, she’ll stay. But she’d better stop letting them tape her in front of a guy who’s manhandling turkeys.

All the rest – Romney, Cheney, Bush – who cares? Romney proved that he didn’t have what it took to attract GOP voters, huge cash accounts notwithstanding, and the GOP have already judged Bush and Cheney. Count the total number of campaign appearances they made – I think it was 6.3 between the two of them. They will not be forces in the party any time soon.

I bring the piece to your attention not because Cohen has anything interesting to say. His column is about as interesting as listening to a rooster crowing. I bring it to you because it utterly lacks perspective. Its basis is this: Today is Obama’s day and it’s a new day and it’s a new world and it will be forever. But Clinton and Nixon proved that even disgrace isn’t forever. Dan Rather weathered many more storms than W. before he finally fell – and people still pay to hear him speak. Both parties have bounced back, or crawled back, from ignoble defeat, and if the old voices weren’t part of it, the new voices were.

Certainly, conservative commentators and politicians have much to be reflective about and will have to work hard to find a way out of this defeat. But if the liberals follow Cohen and are dismissive of our beliefs and our numbers, they will be on someone’s “should go away” list not too many years from now.

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esterday, C-SM had what I believe is its best day since I started blogging four years ago (my first post* was on October 18, 2004). I doubt if five people read that post, but yesterday C-SM got 1,386 hits and 1,786 page views. I’m humbled and grateful.

* Looking back at that first post, I’m pretty proud of what I wrote. It is as applicable as McCain and Obama race to the finish as it was in the final days of Bush/Kerry:

A Purposeful Presidency

A life purpose isn’t built overnight. It is formed early and grows slowly, nurtured by feedback and strengthened by milestones in passion, pain, achievement and failure. The president of the only superpower on the planet should understand his purpose with clarity and pursue it with integrity.

President Bush may not always understand how mind, larynx and mouth are supposed to work together; he my frighten timid Europeans with his assured, straightforward beliefs, but he certainly understands his purpose. When the 757s hit the Twin Towers, his entire lifetime — early exposure to world politics, youthful misadventures, mid-life conversion, private and public sector work — congealed into a fierce purpose: to protect American democracy, world democracy, from terrorist repressors of life, libery and happiness.

And Senator Kerry? His purpose is to be president. Beyond that, clarity fogs. The mist may be the result of his 20-year Senate career, where passion, pain, achievement and purpose were dulled by Senatorial privilege, three re-election campaigns and two remarkable successes at gold-digging. His lack of purpose is evident in his record; his staff’s insistence on 59 bills in a 20-year career is both pathetic and false, and not a single piece of Kerry legislation is the result of a long-term passion for anything but pandering to the electorate.

This November, vote with a purpose.

Amen.

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et’s take a break from all the newsy frivolity – the economic recovery plan, the market mayhem, Ahmadinejad’s latest threats against Israel, oh, I don’t know … the election – and deal with something really, really serious. Sarah Palin’s lip liner. We join the world’s largest leftyblog:

On September 10th, Wonkette received a tip that Sarah Palin’s lipliner is a tattoo.

From: C______@gmail.com>
To: tips@wonkette.com
Date: Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 2:59 PM
Subject: tip on Sarah Pallin Notes: Sarah’s sister in-law owns a beauty parlor in Wasilla…apparently Sarah’s lip liner is tattooed on…not sure what to do with that one.
leak to wonkette

So although the allegation comes in a strangely cryptic email and there is no actual proof that this procedure was performed, we’ve been studying Sarah Palin’s mouth very closely …

Are they obsessed? Yes, I’d say they’re obsessed. The 43.49% that say it is a lip tattoo are obsessed, the 23.24% that say it’s not are obsessed, and even the 28.68% who have studied and pondered and pondered and studied and just couldn’t make up their minds are terribly, terribly obsessed.

By the way, Incredible Daughter #2, who is trained in this sort of stuff (she’s not just a beauty, she’s a beauty professional) took one look at the picture above and said:

No way. It’s uneven … but WHO CARES?

Smart girl. Do you think we’ll see a poll next on whether Joe Biden’s got hair plugs? No, of course not. It doesn’t matter because he’s a man so let’s not get catty, and more to the point, he’s not a woman who has done the unspeakable sin of not goose-stepping with the bra-burners. Conservative women, we are led to believe by this obscene obsession withe Palin, aren’t allowed to think, work, run for vice president, and they certainly aren’t allowed to get lip liner tattoos.

Here’s a question that we conservatives might want to spend the next day or two on: Do you think Nancy Pelosi has a new face tattooed over her old one?

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I

t’s really incredible how blogging has gone from nowhere to everywhere in a blink of the cultural/historical eye.  How pervasive have blogs become?  This pervasive:

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ou get the sense Huffpo has been waiting impatiently, tracking every word from Sarah Palin’s mouth, ready to tear into her the moment something vaguely approaching a gaffe comes out. Today they pounced:

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, as McClatchy reported, “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.”

Any student who’s taken Comparative Gaffes 101 immediately recognizes this as barely a needle-mover on the Gaffe-o-meter, falling far short of classic gaffes like Joe Biden’s “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” or Michelle Obama’s “For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”

For the record, we taxpayers haven’t sent any money Freddie or Fannie’s way yet. But it’s undeniable that the risk the precarious position of the two entities pose to all us taxpayers is huge, and one way or the other, we’re going to be asked to cover that risk – either by an economic tragedy if they fail, or a taxpayer funded government bailout to keep them from failing.

And both the Obama and McCain camps favor the bailout – a safe course, although I wonder if a free fall in the free market might not be much cheaper in the long run.

Ready to jump on the gaffe but seeing that it’s a jump onto thin ice, Huffpo had to find someone to offer them a safety net, and found it in Dean Baker, co-director of the pro-big government, anti-free market Center for Economic and Policy Research – which counts the Fannie May Foundation among its contributors – one of dozens of hard left foundations Fannie Mae supports (others include The Tides Foundation, National Council of La Raza, the ACLU and NOW.) Can you say, “conflict of interest?” Can you say, “what the heck is Fannie Mae doing?”

Some of CEPR’s earlier claims to fame before today’s obligatory Huffpo quote, according to Discover the Networks, include:

• Predicting that Welfare-to-work would “cause not only an increase in poverty among welfare recipients, but also an increase in the numbers of the working poor.”
• Inveighed against “the worst excesses and irrationalities of a market system” that cause “crises, panics, overshooting, recessions and even depressions.”
• Continuously defends Hugo Chavez, raises money for his interests and published a research brief blamed Venezuela’s lagging economic growth on opposition groups supposedly receiving U.S. funding.
• But, after supporting every program it can find for increasing the size, power and budget of the federal government, opposed any expenditures on the war in Iraq.

The desperation of the Left is showing. Sarah Palin has them scared, very scared.

By the way, Palin made the statement in Colorado Springs last Saturday. Apparently the MSM, even the ones that are in the pocket of the bright and clean and nice-looking guy, are not jumping on this bandwagon.

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T

here are so many negative comments in the left side of the blogosphere about Sarah Palin one hardly knows where to start.

Just look at the front page of Huffington Post. Here are the lead-off headlines:

VETTING PALIN: Andrea Mitchel Says McCain Has Only Met Palin Once… Palin: What Exactly Does The VP Do Everyday?… McCain Spokeswoman: I Have No Idea What McCain’s Relationship Is With Palin…PALIN’S POLITICS: Creationism In Public Schools… Time: Unclear What Her Foreign Policies Are… Says Global Warming Is NOT Man-Made… Said Hillary’s “Whining” Turned Her Off…

And that’s just the top of the page; it gets worse as you scroll down. Let’s break down these headlines: Andrea Mitchell tells us that Palin’s only there out of sheer luck. Next we learn she’s stupid. Then, McCain must have been high when he picked her. She’s a Neanderthal, she can’t possibly be right on foreign policy because we don’t know what her positions are, she’s a Neanderthal, she’s a bimbo.

In other words, we’re seeing the Left’s response to any woman who isn’t a strident, aborting feminist. They love their women that way, but if they’re not cut from that cloth, derision, insult and hatefulness are just fine. Here’s a case in point, from the 5,470 HuffPo comments:

“Fear the Palin bounce.”

“Hahahaha – maybe bouncing on McCain is the only way she got chosen!”

What’s with these feminista Dems not being able to allow that a woman can advance any way but by using sex?

Just about every HuffPo columnist is attacking Palin, and through Palin, McCain, and through McCain, Republicans, so I decided to narrow the field by looking at what one of their female columnists, Linda Bergthold, had to say. She’s not impressed, calling her column, The VP Choice that Cost the Presidency for McCain. (Whoa … is she conceding McCain had a chance?)

Let’s break down her lead, complete with my comments:

I think we will look back at today as the day when the Republicans most certainly lost the Presidency. In choosing Sarah Palin of Alaska for Vice President, the Republicans have made a cynical but clever choice. [As opposed to Obama's Biden choice, which was cynical and desperate.]

At least they think it is clever. She is a woman, young (44 years old), a Governor (only two years) [Obama has only three years as a Senator, most of them spent campaigning, not leading], a mother (five children) [Horrors! What a BREEDER!} , pro-life, and pro-gun.

But what is she not? She is NOT pro-choice. [Bergthold apparently thought that was worth saying twice, apparently unaware that at least 50 percent of America is with Palin on that]. She has NO national experience [and Obama's is what, exactly?]. She has never been under the intense scrutiny of a national campaign [Nor was Obama, until this campaign - how dumb is this broad woman?].

She is under investigation for some incident in Alaska that is messy and personal. [I'll give you George Soros' own link to that story; you weigh it against Ayres and Wright and let me know what you think].

She has no international experience [Nor does Obama, except for one lousy speech in Berlin]. Her experience governing is in a very small state, famous for its “Bridge to Nowhere” kind of political graft. [She killed the bridge, and at least she's run something, unlike Obama. Well wait, he ran an Annenberg Challenge grant, squandering over $100 million and accomplishing nothing.] Her Republican colleague [wrong choice of words, if you check her record] in that state, Senator Ted Stevens has been indicted for corruption [she became governor based on her successful fights against corruption].

If you can find a better example of a visceral reaction coming from surging hate hormones, let me know. Bergthold didn’t even bother to read up on Palin, apparently, or taking a page from Saul Alinsky’s playbook, she just ignored the truth and wove her own narrative.

Boil down the millions of pages of negative comment and seething hatred that have been churned out by the Left since McCain’s announcement and what you have left is the brilliance of McCain’s selection. The Dems can’t attack the GOP vice presidential nominee without attacking their own presidential nominee.

Nowhere is this more evident than the criticism that she’s a token who wouldn’t be where she is were it not for her gender. Does anyone honestly think that a clean, nice looking white guy could have gotten where Obama is if he had nothing more than a paper-thin resume and a nice presentation? Honestly?

Pollyanna is not my secret middle name. I realize that Palin’s got challenges ahead of her and that she could end up being a liability for the ticket – just as Joe Biden could well be.

But Palin wasn’t picked because she’s a woman or a Focus on the Family conservative – or, for that matter, the one with the fattest resume. She was picked to fill a much bigger gap in the McCain ticket. What gap? The Obama Excitement Gap. Obama is where he is today only because he generates larger than life excitement. That is the gap McCain had to fill, and looking about – Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Whitman – no one was there to fill it, no one at all except for Alaska’s corruption-bustin’, basketball-coachin’, dog-sleddin’, bear huntin’, oil drillin’, pageant winnin’, baby makin’ governor, Sarah Palin.

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his news today from one of McClatchy’s premier rags, The Sacramento Bee:

The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well.

The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago.

But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of the newspaper industry, continues to struggle with the migration of business to the Internet and other media.

Some cheer the demise of the MSM; I am not one of them, especially regarding papers like the SacBee, which are the newspapers of record for the states they serve. I hope that most of those offered buyouts are useless hacks, no longer needed ad sales people and the like, but when you’re talking about a full-time employee at the Bee, you just might be talking about reporters with years of experience and tough savvy who cover state government like no one else.

Who is going to replace the MSM, for all its faults? What bloggers are ready to step up and cover the governor, the legislature and dozens of state bureaucracies? Exactly none. I don’t care how noble the bloggers are in their intentions, they won’t receive the deference provided to journalists, they don’t have the same protections, and they definitely lack the resources the MSM had in their prime.

Of course, I’m part of the problem. I subscribe to nothing now except the on-line WSJ. I read the SacBee just about every day, but I give them nothing for their efforts to report the news and make it available to me. And I don’t look at their on-line ads, either.

With the newspapers in trouble and the blogs not yet ready to pick up the ball, do we really face the prospect of having to rely on broadcast news for coverage of state government? If so, we’re doomed.

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‘m writing this in my usual spot in the kitchen nook, the good Lord having returned our little expedition safely home. The last day was like the others in that I was completely, blessedly, out of the news loop with VP selections not even approaching my consciousness. Lucky me. But it was entirely unlike the other days, as well: One of high-tailing it down a freeway, not arcing through curves along the shore and through the redwoods. Out of the foggy forests we flew, across wine country, through a traffic-choked San Francisco, into the Silicon Valley, on a flight, and home.

But against that benign backdrop is this: I will shortly reveal Bookworm‘s identity. The secretive Bay Area conservative blogger has been masked for far too long!

But first, a tale prefaced by this: Incredible Daughter #1 is a serious BMW fanatic. She tracks her Z4 at various raceways, regularly goes to meets and drives with other BMW owners, and is a moderator at Bimmerforums, a very popular BMW page. So yesterday, when the drive turned out to be less engaging than on the earlier days and we found the conversation lacking, we made the simple decision to play “spot the German car.”

Even including Volkswagens (think VW bus in NorCal) the pickings were few, and after 20 or so challenging minutes, our count was around five. A VW or two, an old and a middle-aged Mercedes, a BMW 3 series. Then after a long-ish dry spell, we came down a hill and onto a straightaway through a little, picturesque farming valley, when suddenly there appeared a vision: A glorious 1930s vintage burgundy and cream BMW roadster. This is almost certainly the same car, from a photo I found of a 2004 vintage BMW rally.

It was immediately followed by a silver 507, a 1950s era luxury sportscar BMW put up against the Mercedes gull-wing coupe. It almost put BMW into bankruptcy, but is achingly beautiful and technologically hyper-advanced. It was easily worth $500,000 and who even knows what the vintage roadster would command.

Incredible Daughter #1 was making sounds I’d never heard from her before: Squeals, screams and ooohs strung together in a very easily understood if not particularly well articulated expression of delight and shock. There followed another classic roadster from the 30s, plus various newer models. The count of German cars soared to the teens, and the rest of the game, which ended in the 50s as we approached the wealthy Bay Area, was a let-down.

It turned out we had stumbled upon the BMW Vintage & Classic Car Club of America’s Aptos to Eureka to Tahoe to Aptos rally. Read more here.

Discounting the visit with Bookworm, which I’ll get to next, the next most exciting thing was seeing a Prius – a Prius! - in Marin County – Marin County! – with a McCain bumper sticker on it. Albeit, a small one, but still …

So we (Incredible Daughters #1 and #3 and me) carried out our stealth meeting with the secretive proprietress of Bookworm Room in a coffee shop somewhere in Marin County. She is delightful, as expected. We had a wide-ranging discussion on everything from history (she’s reading about Einstein, I’m reading about the American West) to stealth conservatism, to raising kids and how acorns may or may not fall far from the tree. Talking to Bookworm is something of a cross between electroshock therapy and a perfect hot fudge sundae. Your brain gets quite a work-out, but it’s a fabulously indulgent pleasure. Blogging can make a good friend out of someone you’ve never even met – and I see the feeling was mutual.

So why would I destroy Bookworm’s confidentiality and expose her secret identity? Why would I put my blogfriend at risk of negative social stigma, of being treated like a leper in her home town?

It’s simple, really: Once a journalist, always a journalist. You really can’t trust me with a secret.

Besides, what right does she have to write about public persona while keeping her own persona secret? The public has a right to know her identity that overpowers her right to keep her identity secret.

And no, it doesn’t matter one whit that the public will not benefit much at all from the considerable harm I’m about to cause her. The only important thing is the relentless rush of knowledge, and knowing her identity is just one more piece of the puzzle; one of little consequence purchased at great price for sure, but I’m willing to hurt her in the name of the public’s right to know.

So,

without further delay,

here is a photo of me

with the until no longer unrevealed

Bookworm:

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Update: Bloomberg reports:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hasn’t endorsed any specific plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a government spokesman said, a day after a magazine report that he backed Barack Obama’s proposal.

Al-Maliki supports a “general vision” of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and has not backed a plan by Obama, the presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, for a 16- month withdrawal window, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an e-mailed statement in Baghdad today.

This has certainly set off a swirl of controversy, but it hasn’t changed the core of this post.

T

he blogosphere is a very, very prejudiced place because we surround ourselves with like-minded sorts and shun those who hold another view. The stories we bloggers select to write about suffer the same way; we ignore stories that trouble us, and pounce on those that confirm our beliefs, either that we’re right or others are wrong.

Case in point: Spiegel’s interview with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in which Maliki says that Barack Obama’s 16-month timeframe for a withdrawal from Iraq is the right one, and appeared to encourage people not to vote for candidate with an Iraq plan like … oh … John McCain’s:

“Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

The irony of this, of course, is that everything that Obama opposed – foremost the surge – is what’s made it possible. Without the policies endorsed by Bush and McCain, Maliki would not have so optimistic a view of his country’s future. But all that matters politically is that now he does have that view, and Obama will be able to strut about looking brilliant, as if his view on Iraq was always the right view on Iraq.

That makes this story bad, bad news for anyone who feels McCain is better (even marginally) for America’s future than Obama. Maliki’s comments could effectively end the war debate, with Obama’s “See, I told you so” much more resonant than McCain’s “Wait! It was me!” And that makes this story one the leftybloggers love and we conservatives have largely ignored.

Just check out memeorandum. It headlines about a half dozen different news articles and blog posts on the story, including the Spiegel story and a Reuters story that seems to have scooped Spiegel internationally, then links to about 40 news and blog posts on the story. Yes, there are some posts from the conservative side making points similar to those I’ve made above, like this, from The American Mind:

First, realize Maliki sees Obama as the Presidential front runner. It’s rational not to rock the boat. Second, Iraq and the U.S. wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for the surge that quelled violence.

But many many more leftyblogs are listed, making comments like this:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki found a pony and it’s name is Obama. While John McSame was busy questioning Obama’s foreign policy credentials the Iraqi Prime Minster was endorsing them.

Or this one from Polimom that cues off the post from The American Mind above:

That is absolutely the McCain campaign’s narrative on Iraq. It has to be, since it’s all they’ve got now. And you can bet your bottom dollar that many millions of Americans will recall — with or without the reminders that are surely coming — that the dire situation that led to the surge was predicated by an incredibly stupid invasion.

Hmmm. How is it that she’s forgotten that Maliki would not be speaking at all about the progress towards a secure democracy in Iraq, were it not for the invasion she still calls “incredibly stupid?” How is it that she’s conveniently dropped the Butcher of Baghdad from her memory? Here’s why: Because, like most of us, she primarily reads the posts and news items she wants to read and ignores the ones she doesn’t.

The blogosphere is not the great equalizer, in which we all graze widely on the field of ideas (oh wait – look, even the grazing sheep are bunched together); rather it is a cafeteria, where we’re free to move about, selecting only the items that appeal to us, and never tasting the ones that don’t. (There are also those strange beings who actively scout out opposing views and leave aggressive, obnoxious comments to irritate the inmates of that particular asylum. That’s a bizarre human dynamic since they are forever assigning themselves losing battles.)

I, too, am guilty of treating the blogosphere as a cafeteria, and it’s easy to understand, since opposing points of view irritate the gut, chafe the senses … and even, occasionally, challenge opinions that are too hard-set. That’s why I do spend a bit of time perusing the opposition, but I confess, I don’t do it often enough.

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T

ime will tell whether patriotism matters, because we are busy setting up the test case.

Our schools, our intelligentsia, our media and our publishers are all busy setting up patriotism as an inferior, baser alternative to internationalism, and are painting soldiers of valor as victims of war, striving to create a whole generation that will believe as they believe: That America is not worth fighting for.

Tom Sowell, in what just may be the most important read of this 4th of July, shows us how history is supposed to be used – to keep us from repeating it – in his Real Clear Politics essay, Does Patriotism Matter? He turns to France in the years following WWI, when the teachers unions and academia fought to destroy patriotism in favor of internationalism, and to paint soldiers – all soldiers, French and German – as equal victims of cruel, unjustifiable war.

At the outset of the [German] invasion [of France in WWII], both German and French generals assessed French military forces as more likely to gain victory, and virtually no one expected France to collapse like a house of cards — except Adolf Hitler, who had studied French society instead of French military forces.

Did patriotism matter? It mattered more than superior French tanks and planes.

Did the American Left learn anything from this experience? Of course not! History, to them, is made to be rewritten, not learned from. So we see on this 4th of July, displays of patriotism on the Left like this one, at Daily Kos:

The Declaration of Independence was the laundry list of grievances stating America’s case for freedom. Its accusations against the King ranged from egregious (“He has plundered our seas, burnt our towns and ravaged the lives of our people”) to the trifling (“Sometimes when he sees us at a party he acts like he doesn’t know us”). But proud men would not take up arms against the Crown solely because the King had “erected a multitude of new offices.” The authors of the Declaration knew they would also have to appeal to man’s higher nature, to stir men’s souls. They needed something with some zazz. Enter a hot-shot tobacco executive from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson.

His task would be to synthesize the unique brand message of America down to something that would captivate the hard to reach “12-28 ragtag militia” demographic, all the while not offending traditional “Butterchurn Moms.” His first attempt at a Preamble was:

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AMERICA. A is for All the tea they taxed. M is for the Minutemen they shellaxed…”
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It tested poorly. But his rewrite would be win-win:

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
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In a scant 35 words, Jefferson had given the nation the kind of positive brand identity that tendered moot the issue of whether or not we had to live up to its ideals. Still, knowing the inherent contradiction between their noble words and the reality of a slave-owning nation, Jefferson and the Founders wisely decided to strike from the Declaration of Independence the phrase “or your money back.”

Oh, tickle me pinko. Or this, by Charles Karel Bouley at HuffPo:

I could write volumes about patriotism this July 4th. How many column inches in the last few weeks has been devoted to whether or not Barack Obama is patriotic enough, if a war record is on or off limits, and what the love of country truly means. Is anyone in government today truly patriotic?

I’m not I suppose. I don’t like the “Star Spangled Banner” as our national anthem. It’s too violent and too hard to sing for anyone except Whitney or Barbra or… get the point? I think “America The Beautiful” is a far better national anthem. So, I’m unpatriotic.

I question everything. I agree whole-heartedly with Gen. Wesley Clark about Sen. John McGoo’s war record and how just because you’re a POW doesn’t mean you’d make a good POTUS.

And I question our patriotism this July 4th. We, the People who should have seen this gas increase coming, who let a president bankrupt a nation once great, a failed war…Yes, I could rant and rave about that here for paragraphs and paragraphs.

He then links to a radio rant that is nothing but Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, of railing against the media for even questioning Obama’s patriotism – apparently an off-limits inquiry in a nation where patriots have died to protect free speech.

Contrast that with this, from 365 and a Wakeup, winner of this week’s Watcher’s Council contest:

In my first duty assignment I learned why our drill instructors focused so intently on hardening us. I needed that strength when we secured mass graves in Bosnia. I needed it when we faced refugee camps so crippled with famine that the fluid flow of the human body was reduced to hard, angular lines. And I needed that strength when we in countries where the only rules were the brutal laws of physics and ballistics. Exposure to these harsh realities could have broken our spirit, but there were joys to counterbalance the pain. Sometimes we would find it in the sing song lyrics of children chirping in high pitch squeals we couldn’t decipher. Other times we found our solace in the serenity our presence brought to areas where civilization had been stripped to its animal core. But mostly we found it in each other, and in the simple knowledge that our actions proved that life could triumph over death, if only for a moment.

Just because the Left wants to belittle and denigrate patriotism doesn’t mean we should allow it to; it doesn’t mean we can’t put up a spirited – patriotic – defense of it. We should, because if we don’t, we’ll sorrily find out the answer to the question posed in the headline of this post: Yes indeed, patriotism does matter. It matters very much.

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