Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right

The natives are superficially agreeable, but they go in for cannibalism, headhunting, infanticide, incest, avoidance and joking relationships, and biting lice in half with their teeth. ' Margaret Mead

Political "debate" in this country is insufferable. Whether conducted in Congress, on the political talk shows, or played out at dinners and cocktail parties, politics is a nasty sport. At the risk of giving away the ending: It's all liberals' fault.

As there is less to dispute, liberals have become more bitter and angry. The Soviet threat has been vaporized, women are not prevented from doing even things they should be, and the gravest danger facing most black Americans today is the risk of being patronized to death.

And yet still, somehow, Tom DeLay (Republican congressman from Texas) poses a monumental threat to democracy as we know it. The left expresses disagreement with DeLay's governing philosophy by calling him "the Meanest Man in Congress," "Dangerous," "the Hammer," "the Exterminator," and the "Torquemada of Texas." For his evident belief in a Higher Being, DeLay is compared to savage murderers and genocidal lunatics on the pages of the New York Times. ("History teaches that when religion is injected into politics-the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo-disaster follows.")

Liberals dispute slight reductions in the marginal tax rates as if they are trying to prevent Charles Manson from slaughtering baby seals. Progress cannot be made on serious issues because one side is making arguments and the other side is throwing eggs-both figuratively and literally. Prevarication and denigration are the hallmarks of liberal argument. Logic is not their metier. Blind religious faith is.