I thought this was sort of a fun coincidence. Over at the "RNC accredited" Power Line blog, one of the main posters, Deacon, is off for the day, observing the Jewish holiday. So he kindly decided to leave us with this posting called "The Horror". This was originally posted on May 26th, 2004 on the subject of a mildly hyperbolic speech by Al Gore on the Abu Ghraib crisis. But Deacon thought he should bring it back today because "the essence applies to an all-too-large chunk of [Gore's] party" these days.
To whit:
One of the great differences between liberals and conservatives is how the two camps go about explaining misconduct. Conservatives prefer straightforward, old-fashioned explanations that focus on a flaw in those who commit the misconduct -- greed, lust, cruelty, or (in extreme cases) evil itself. For liberals, such explanations are unsatisfyingly superficial. Misconduct must have a root cause, but liberals consider basic human instincts such as greed, lust, and cruelty to be insufficiently rooted. Thus, an intellectual posse must be recruited to track down the real culprit. And the search always seems to lead to the liberals' version of the heart of darkness -- "Amerika," in other words the policies adopted by America's elected leaders. By rejecting the obvious explanation and shifting the blame to American policy, the liberal accompishes that which is most important to him -- he proves his intellectual and moral superiority.
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