Stop Me Before I Vote Again

... and of course, as we used to say in the 60s, scratch a liberal and find a Nazi. Oh, those were the days! What brio we had!

This train of thought was set off by a fine item from the esteemed IOZ:

This is the problem with the left, and this is why, though their language of "national interest" is somewhat distasteful to me, I so often identify more closely with the isolationist right than the sort-of anti-imperial left.... Most lefties apparently do not [understand] that American governments taking up the rhetorical cause of rebels and revolutions are not engaging in rare, admirable acts of solidarity.

Now though I am a Lefty and IOZ is not, I have to admit the justice of his comment. Way too many Lefties are really just liberals at heart; the moralizing universalism, and the fixed belief that the US Marines might, in the right hands, be a force for good, give the game away.

Where I part company with IOZ is in his lukewarm endorsement of isolationism. C'mon, we can do better than that. Proclaim it from the housetops -- we're proud, unabashed, supermax isolationists. US Out Of Everywhere! Don't wake up, America, whatever you do!

It's kind of amazing how unthinkable isolationism has become in the American ideasphere -- though it's probably still the fundamental (and quite sensible) outlook of most ordinary Americans, who generally have to be cozened with some ginned-up threat to support our adventures abroad. But among respectable college survivors, isolationism is literally unthinkable -- one of those words that evokes a blank stare of gobsmacked stupefaction if you use it in any other context than that of reprobation. It's right up there with human sacrifice and female circumcision.

And this is particularly true, I'm sorry to say, among Lefties. Mention isolationism and they'll start gabbling about Charles Lindbergh and Father Coughlin. It's as if they all fell into a Rip van Winkle nap sometime in the 30s and only just woke up.

Via IOZ.

Tehran has flaunted the drone’s capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

"Flaunted", heh. By the rules of the infantile, violently stupid game played in DC, the Iranian military has pwned Obama and his generals. They've been punked, spanked, humiliated, had their nose rubbed in dog shit and "taught a lesson" in which messages have been sent. Their incompetence has been put on display, for the whole world to ridicule, and their fantasy of high tech, full spectrum dominance has been exposed as the foolishness of techno-utopian dorks. They were pushed into their lockers and had their lunch money stolen. The cool kids are snickering at them. They were tricked into wearing their underpants outside their jeans. All this came at the hands of the Iranian military.

If they ever grow up, they're going to feel sick looking back at their idiocy.