"They're Not Evil, They're Children!"

I was listening to Hugh Hewitt on the way home tonight. He was talking about the Left's reaction to the spread of Middle-Eastern democracy, now exhibiting itself in Lebanon. He quoted from a TalkingPointsMemo piece by Ed Kilgore that denigrated any association between the public uprising in Lebanon and the Bush Doctrine. This in the face of today's New York Times op-ed that - grudgingly - acknowledged:

The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.

But the comment Hugh made that piqued my attention was this, speaking of those on the Left who are in such denial:

They're not evil, they're CHILDREN!

I discussed this a bit in On Guillotines and Gibbets. My question is, "What difference does it make?" Because they're not children. The majority of them are adults who never matured. (There are, as I noted in Guillotines, some who know exactly what they're doing as they manipulate the strings.) But even so, children can be evil, and willfully. And they can commit acts while looking out for the adults who they know would punish them for their wrongdoing. In this case, however, we have biological adults who refuse to acknowledge reality, because it conflicts with their mental model. Once again, we have a textbook example of cognitive dissonance from the Left. Once again, the Anointed have had their noses shoved into the excrement they've been smearing on the walls, and once again they've declared that nothing's changed and everything smells like roses.

But Hugh's "they're CHILDREN!" exclamation smacks to me of a dismissal of responsibility. Hugh Hewitt absently absolves the Left, yet two days ago Howard Dean backhandedly called Republicans evil, speaking at a fundraiser in Lawrence, Kansas.

"Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said, adding: "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."

And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."

How tolerant. Apparently the Left is tolerant of everything but people who disagree with them. Then today in an impassioned Senate speech, Robert Byrd (D-KKK) compared Senate Republicans to Nazis over their threat to invoke the "nuclear nukular option" and change the rules on cloture for judicial nominees:

Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions in modern conditions are carried out with, and not without, not against, the power of the State. The correct order of events was first to secure access to that power of the State, and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality. He never abandoned the cloak of legality. He recognized the enormous, psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made his illegality legal. And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do. To Rule 22 of the standing rules of the Senate. I said to someone this morning who was shoveling snow in my area. "What does nuclear option mean to you?" He answered, "Oh, you mean with Iran?" The people generally don't know what this is about. The nuclear option seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissable the rule.

Now, perhaps surprisingly, I'm with the Senator on opposing that rule change. If the work of the Senate grinds to a halt because one side wants to filibuster, fine with me. Let 'em. The less damage work the Senate does, the better. But invoking the Nazis?

Sounds like projection to me. They're children. We're Nazis.

I. Don't. Fucking. Think. So.

But we're the by-god ADULTS here. And Hugh's observation certainly explains why I have a nearly uncontrollable urge to spank any liberal that spouts off near me.