The Laziness of the Liberal Mind

Of all the stale cliches of liberalism, “the side of history” has to be the laziest. It is a romper room version of Hegelianism, or a secularized version of Providence. (Notice that it involves the Divine Right of the State replacing the Divine Right of Kings as the agent of transcendent History.)

But it explains a lot, including the incredulity and rage liberals exhibit whenever they lose an election. If “History” is on your side, it is categorically impossible that liberalism can lose unless the voters are stupid, or Republican cheated. (You can pick more than one.)

A long time friend writes in to observe that the current liberal campaign to de-legitimize Donald Trump fits a long time pattern:

Sigh. Democrats have been trying to de-legitimize GOP presidential victories for over 40 years. Let’s review:

1) George H.W. Bush won a convincing 54% victory in 1988. And that was after he was down 17% in August and the Dems thought they had it in the bag. Then Bush began pounding on the Little Duke’s MA record, especially his policy of giving furloughs to lifers like Willie Horton. The Left went berserk, claiming they wuz robbed. For the next four years, they never shut up about “Willie Horton” and how it was supposedly “racist” to talk about him, even though Al Gore mentioned it first. (I have a liberal friend who to this day STILL brings it up.) Bush didn’t help his cause by visibly wincing every time the media mentioned it—as though it were a bad childhood memory. You couldn’t blame his 1992 defeat on this, but it put the GOP unnecessarily on the defensive for four years.

2) The Florida 2000 recount. ‘Nuff said.

3) After 2004, remember how Michael Moore and John Kerry were yapping about the Diebold voting machines in Ohio and how there should be a recount?

4) Now that I think about it, they tried to retrospectively de-legitimize Ronaldus Magnus, too. Remember the supposed “October Surprise”? This didn’t come up until 1991 and was the brainchild of Gary Sick, an allegedly disinterested National Security Council staffer (who subsequently morphed into a left-wing commentator). Supposedly, future CIA Director Bill Casey was strapped into the backseat of an SR-71 and flown to Paris to meet with mysterious Iranians and convince them to keep the hostages until after the election. Congress actually investigated this ridiculous “story,” even though Speaker Tom Foley admitted there was no evidence for it. (It was “the seriousness of the charge,” you see.) Needless to say, they found nothing.

In fact, you could even take it back to 1968, when LBJ cynically ordered an end to bombing North Vietnam a week before the election to boost Humphrey. I don’t recall the details, but it had something to do with Nixon supporter Anna Chennault calling the South Vietnamese, or something.

So none of this is new. Democrats seem to believe the only way they can lose is because the GOP somehow cheated. Keep that in mind as this insanity unfolds.

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