Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

We were young.

And we were very, very stupid for college kids. Check that. We were stupid because we were college kids.

Many of the most committed of us, decades later, are still in college and even dumber. We're professors now and our ability to be dumb has never been deeper.

Others of us are well ensconced in the various parts of what passes for the media. We're there with a lot of others just like us and, even if we thought differently, we'd never say it for fear of losing regard, position, grants, or promotion. Besides, we've been around others who think like us for so long its no problem at all to top up the latte and nod in blind agreement.

Nope, we never sold out. We bought in. But we kept the Che poster pinned up forever in our hearts.

And now, we've arrived at our rendezvous with history.

In our aging but fitness-crazed hearts, we hate what we've become and, like any good group of neurotics, transfer that hate to the country that gave us everything including the Long Peace in which to enjoy it.

We're the first in line to bitch and moan and hate a country that makes our freedom possible. More than that we're also in love with the privilege, comfort, money and safety that makes it possible for us to mouth off without limit. And finally, we're coming to understand that we are not our parents' generation, we're "The Not-So-Great" Generation, and, like our president, deep down we're cowards.

We say we're 'afraid' of losing our cherished 'freedom' to the jackbooted legions of Conservative Brownshirts that might stifle our dissent from every street corner. That's really what a lot of us think. That's really just how bull-goose looney we've become.

We're so afraid that we can't look at what scares us but instead pull the covers over our head and dream of the ChristerBoogeymen. Why? Because they're an illusion. They are not really scary at all. Why? Because they are all "just pretend," and we know it. What many of us simply cannot face is the real terror of the times, terror.

We're really afraid of the wrath of those who, unlike us who believe in nothing, believe in something so deeply that they'll kill us for it and die doing it. The bomb in the baby carriage that's wired to the radio. The teenager in the Army sweatshirt with three pounds of C4 wrapped inside of two pounds of ball bearings showing up at the Mall for a Big Mac Attack. The Muslim-American who decides one afternoon to park his Jeep on top of as many of our kids as he can find in a group. That guy sitting next to the window at 36,000 feet with fuses coming out of his Nikes and a t-shirt on that says, "Just Do It." The Immam with a plan who is so tense that he decides to walk into downtown San Francisco and unwind with a small shooting spree. All these realities disturb our dreams and threaten to pull the covers off our heads. We want to elect magic soothing daddy-cools to smarm us to sleep.

As a result, we like the slogans, books, movies, TV shows, politicians and publications that confirm for us the deep liberal dream that if we are just understanding enough, long enough, apologize for living enough, and offer enough in the way of bribes, the oppressed of the world will come to love us... and then just leave us alone.

-- Gerard Van Der Leun, American Digest: Goodbye to the Way We Were