Mark Steyn provides an example of a true gentleman of the modern liberal movement:

This abortion prohibitionist hag won’t cut it among women with brains.And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.

I'll let his eloquence speak for itself.

We all know it's a cult, but they're actually now openly pirating Christian terms to advance their candidate. I gotta find a transcript.

Here's what I heard: Commence the deliberate mixing of religious and civic language...

For Barack Obama, for Joe Biden, for me, for all of us, the principles of faith call us to service.

With faith in the American dream, we strive for better schools, economic justice, and smarter foreign policies because we believe in the God-given principles of equality, freedom, and opportunity. With faith in each other, we work for a common-sense approach to politics that focuses on results, not partisan division, because we recognize that we're all in this together.

Aren't we all tired of a Washington that doesn't have any faith in us? Fellow delegates, fellow Democrats, and fellow Americans, now is the time to let our faith guide us to action once again.

It would seem to me that a Washington that had faith in us as citizens would be willing to allow us to live our lives as unencumbered by the government as possible, as truly free individuals with rights and responsibilities to care for ourselves. More expansive government is referred to as a "nanny state," Tim. That's what you're arguing for, right? A nanny isn't there to trust her wards; she's there to watch over them, to limit them, to make sure that they don't do anything that might harm themselves. That's not what our founders intended.

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will put middle-class Americans first again and reward companies who create jobs in America instead of shipping them overseas.

Hmm. What about foreign companies that build factories here? Do we shut them down because they're not American owned? Or does this policy only work in one direction?

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and invest in green-collar, clean- energy jobs right here at home.

Obama will be a president who can - by the sheer force of his will, it seems - call into existence the technology that will allow us to end our dependence on oil and switch over entirely to an economy powered by... good feelings? What exactly? BTW, one fine way to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil would be to drill domestically. Just a tip.

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will invest in our students, teachers and schools, and make college affordable once again for every American family.

Oh good lord. As if education budgets won't grow every year by remarkable amounts under either McCain or Obama. FAIL.

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will responsibly end the war in Iraq, give our veterans and their families the support they need, and reinvigorate our military to face the challenges ahead.

John McCain is the only person running that I know of who has always advocated responsibly ending the war in Iraq. He's always wanted to win it. The jack-ass you're talking about was forced to acknowledge the success of the surge that he opposed and then stated that even if he knew then what he knows now, he'd still have voted against it.

Now, let's really just lay into the religious language, shall we?

If we put our faith into action, we can move mountains.
We can move the mountains of negativity and division and gridlock.
We can move the mountains of special interests and business as usual.
We can move the mountains of hopelessness that surround too many of our people and communities.
Does anybody here have a little faith tonight? Is anybody here ready to move those mountains?
Starting right here in the Mile High City, we will put our faith into action; we will reject the failed policies of George Bush and John McCain; we will elect Barack Obama our next president.
In the words of the gospel hymn -- "move mountain."
Say it with me -- "move mountain."
Say it with me again -- "move mountain."
Mountain, get out of our way!

Wow. Just... Wow. Witness the founding of Obamianity, the newest political religion. Jonah Goldberg was right.

Corporatism, Industrial Policy, Crisis-Mongering, Nationalism (Hidden in Euphemism) [Jonah Goldberg]
Gosh, I could swear someone wrote a book about this sort of thing.

Regarding Milt Rosenberg's show in the last post - here's a recap from an observer...

hmm?

SO LET'S SUM UP what America would look like in an age of Obama.

To start there would be no more driving SUVs. No more Rush. For God's sake absolutely no driving your SUV while listening to Rush. No more eating whatever you want. Definitely no keeping your home as warm or as cool as you prefer. No capital gains cuts because they are unfair. Your guns will be banned. And if you have a different opinion on global warming? All those lofty supporters of rights for terrorists are going to strip every oil executive in America of theirs in a heartbeat, live and in living color.

Is anyone paying attention here? Today the targets are talk radio, oil, SUVs, or guns or debates on global warming and so on. But what about tomorrow and the day after that and the day and years after that? What freedoms will next be targeted with that deadliest trademark of an Obamalander -- moral superiority? What do we have when the sole purpose of the government as run by the chilling principles of Obamaland is to "use the political process" to remove freedoms large and small one by one by one?

Someone needs to speak it plainly.

The word is fascism.

We head north once again to Canada, land of human-rights trampling "human rights commissions," to examine the case of the York University student union's effort to ban pro-life groups from campus, citing their inherently "sexist" nature:

In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it "within a pro-choice realm," and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance.

"You have to recognize that a woman has a choice over her own body," Ms. Massa said. "We think that these pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they're sexist in nature ... The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing. They call them murderers, all of them do ... Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women's rights."

The school's administration condemned the decision as contrary to its academic mission.

I realize that Canada doesn't have the First Amendment, and as such the freedom of speech isn't as protected there as it is here in the US. But come on. To simply preempt any discussion of the issue of abortion unless it comes from a "choice" perspective? These people can't be serious.

And yet, there it is in black and white. The horror of being exposed to a contrary view - one that views abortion as morally wrong to boot (imagine that!) - is just too much for these tender souls to bear. So rather than expose the student body to the dangers of persuasion, the student union is going to preemptively ban the offending speech.

Do these people have no clue how clueless this makes them look? How dictatorial? How fascist? Ah well, this can at least serve as yet another example of the vaunted "tolerance" of the left.

Uncalibrated Irony Meter Alert: It turns out that Ms. Massa, the spokesperson for the York Federation of Students, has a pretty selective idea of what constitutes "free speech":

Gilary Massa, the vice-president, external, of the York Federation of Students and the driving force behind the proposed ban on anti-abortion groups, earlier this year defended free speech as she called for the lifting of a ban on the phrase "Israeli Apartheid."

In a letter to McMaster's provost and the Students Union Executive, Ms. Massa said she was shocked and dismayed to hear that the administration and McMaster Students Union had banned the use of the phrase "Israeli Apartheid" on campus.

The letter called for the ban on the phrase to be rescinded "in accordance with a basic commitment to freedom of expression and organization in the democratic context of the public university."

The letter added, "This strange and unprecedented ban is a blatant violation of democratic freedoms of speech and dissent, and an attack on students' right to organize. It is the position of the YFS and GSA [Graduate Students] that universities are sites where discussions and debates about difficult geopolitical questions should be promoted, not stifled. International controversy about use of the phrase 'Israeli Apartheid' cannot be resolved through repression, but through ongoing intellectual exchange."

Here's some free speech for you: Massa is DUMBER THAN A SACK OF HAMMERS.

Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn discuss Obama's book, Dreams From My Father. Stanley Kurtz comments:

The Democratic left now believes that the United States is ready for a genuinely "progressive," paradigm-changing president. They are not abandoning Obama, and are not even fully capable of seeing how damaging Obama’s background and underlying worldview seem to many (although they are worried enough to try to cover for him). But the country is changing and we can no longer be certain of the impact all these revelations will have. What I do think is obvious at this point is that cultural issues will not be a sideshow in 2008, but very much at the center of things. And if Obama should win, the culture clash of the Clinton and Bush years is sure to go on at full blast.

Richard Kirk reviews Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, and points to the root of many of our modern problems in the US:

Woodrow Wilson is the unexpected villain of Liberal Fascism. Based on a review of his academic writings, Goldberg demonstrates that Wilson was a devotee of power—power utilized according to the pragmatic lights of John Dewey. Consequently, the twenty-eighth president denigrated, with the confidence of a divinely anointed leader, those constitutional provisions that limited his ability to mold the nation into a healthy organism that worked for the good of all. This “evolutionary” vision of history provided the intellectual justification for that modern legal theory that dissolves all governmental boundaries—the living Constitution. It also paved the way for an approach to education that transferred the locus of pedagogical authority from parents to the state. In Professor Wilson’s words: “Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life…[but] to make them as unlike their fathers as we can.”

Meet the New New Deal, same as the Old New Deal:

“We need a president who can restore our confidence,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We need a president who is ready on day one to be commander in chief of our economy.”

That's exactly what we need - a leader that we can all look to to restore our pride in our nation, who can save us from the folly of the free market, who can fix from above the flaws of capitalists, who can make the trains run on time...

Is anyone else a bit creeped out by Barack Obama's embrace of pseudo-fascist propaganda style art to promote his campaign? Is hope and change only possible through worshipful adoration of our great leader?

On the other hand, it did also provide the opening for LOLbama:

He'll make the trains run on time!

A good editorial:

One might call it Shakespearian if there were a shred of nobleness in the story of Eliot Spitzer's fall. There is none. Governor Spitzer, who made his career by specializing in not just the prosecution, but the ruin, of other men, is himself almost certainly ruined.

Mr. Spitzer's brief statement yesterday about a "private matter" surely involves what are widely reported to be his activities with an expensive prostitution ring discovered by the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Those who believe Eliot Spitzer is getting his just deserts may be entitled to that view, but it misses the greater lesson for our politics.

It looks as though Eliot Spitzer, the awful governor of New York, will be resigning after it was revealed today that he has been caught in a federal prostitution sting. Spitzer was the worst kind of abuser-of-power when he was the New York state Attorney General, and his governorship has been marked by allegations of serious corruption and ham-fisted attempts to ram unpopular legislation through the state assembly (for instance, driver's licenses for illegal aliens). I won't be shedding any tears for the (soon to be ex-) governor tonight, and Dean Barnett notes that this episode could have ended better:

Today would be a happier day if Spitzer were driven from public life because the public recoiled at his holier-than-thou prosecutions that were driven much more by a sense of ambition than a desire for justice.

Alas, we'll take what we can get.

The more I read about Barack Obama's campaign, the more, well, creepy it seems...

• By Obama We Were Saved
• "we need a leader who is going to touch our souls, because the truth is, our souls are broken"
• "heal America and change the world"
• Oh, Obamaaaaaa!
• Obama's First Coming
• And Obama Wept
• Reanimating Camelot's Corpse

For all the talk that the left likes to engage in about how conservative Christians are trying to impose a theocracy and how fearful they are of such a (ridiculously remote) possibility, once they figure out that they need religious voters to take them seriously in order to win elections they go and nominate a candidate who appears to think that he's Jesus Christ.



More: a downright creepy op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today:

But this collective cathexis that created Obamamania is obviously a deep desire for authenticity, and he is the natural repository of our hidden hopes.

Mr. Obama is what the future looks like: a biracial child of divorce, schlepped halfway around the world by a conscientious but confounded single mother, abandoned by a wayward but winning Kenyan father, international but somehow still all-American, a party-hardy Harvard Law graduate. That is, an ordinary extraordinary guy, the dreamiest of all our dreams. If only every kid from a broken home could turn out to be such a fine gentleman! How can we not love him? With a million other things he could be doing, Mr. Obama actually wants to lead us. Us? What did we do to deserve him?

Goodness! And this from the author of Prozac Nation, who seems to need Lithium more than an antidepressant...

Taunting is also fun:

I keep getting comments about Pulitzer Prize Nominee Jonah Goldberg! Unfortunately for my pals from Kos, I have deleted all but one. And I will continue deleting them. I will delete any comment suggesting that Jonah Goldberg is not a Pulitzer Prize Nominee. Based on the merits of the comment? No, based on the fun. I'm considering changing my policy and referring to him as "THREE TIME PULITZER PRIZE WINNER JONAH GOLDBERG." That will ruin a few Kos Kid diapers.

One sad little nut comments over and over, with the full knowledge that his comments will be deleted. He thinks I see the comments, and that they make me cry. Unfortunately, he does not realize that I only see a few words in the Haloscan approval window. So I have no idea what he has been trying to tell me.

It's a wonderfully asymmetrical situation. He reads absolutely everything I write about Pulitzer Prize Nominee Jonah Goldberg, but I have no idea what he says about me. It's a good system. I like it.

Mmmmm, fun.

Jonah Goldberg notes this particularly thick and rich passage of media gushing over Obama and the "Kennedy legacy":

“With a voice filled with vigor and that unmistakable cadence, Ted Kennedy reached back to the 1960s and said the same sense of possibility and hope that carried his brother to the White House had found a new standard bearer....In the civic religion that is Democratic politics, the most treasured covenant was passed to the young Senator from Illinois.”

That almost qualifies as public indecency, doesn't it? And how interesting to see Democratic politics referred to as a "civic religion." That'll go a long way toward giving you a sense of what the Dems see as the role of the state. Liberal Fascism, indeed...