Liberalism: The End of an Era, Part Deux

Interesting post on Instapundit today—one that is in some ways an echo of our observations yesterday, mainly that "liberal" as it is currently used in the MSM, academia, and elsewhere, is no longer a viable term to describe the hate-filled leftists that now control the heart and soul of the Democratic Party:

Reader Rachel Walker emails:

I just finished reading MyDD's opinion on polls. As a liberal I was rather disturbed with the blogger's wish that Bush's approval rating was in the 30's. Does that mean he is so unimpressed by our own party that the only way we could win is to make Bush look bad? With such an attitude, we don't look so great either.

It's such whiny and desparate behavior that leads me to more centrist and conservative blogs than anything Kos or DU related. It seems to me liberals have forgotten to be liberal (tolerant, polite, yet firm in belief), and such behavior is why many people, though they do not like Bush or some conservative ideas, tend to distance themselves from the left. I know that's the reason for me.

Emphasis in the above is courtesy of HazZzmat. We'd observe that reader Rachel is still a little slippery on her own definition of "liberal" in that she lists attributes of what she believes their behavior to be (tolerant, polite, yet firm in belief) without actually defining what their "belief" might be. Nonetheless, she does single out the nature of the virtues that so-called liberals endlessly bleat about but very rarely practice: tolerant (except if you're conservative or pro-life), polite (unless you're talking to a Republican), and firm in belief (like supporting Roe v. Wade while protesting the clubbing of baby seals?).

We're not dissing Instapundit's honest reader here. Indeed, although her own response is telling in ways she might not have imagined, she nonetheless is figuring out that the screaming hatemongers on the hard left do not at all fall into the definition of what she, herself, would term "liberal." The fact that she can't quite define it herself is less her own fault than the fault of the leftists who have tried to retain the inherent surface virtue of the term "liberal" while eviscerating entirely its core meaning.

Politically, Dems seem to think that more of this crusading hatred, added with (mostly) Republican Congressional scandals will spell victory for them in 2006 and 2008. But with people like Rachel wising up to the motivations of people they've customarily supported, we suggest that too-clever-by-half Dems like Kerry and Hillary think again.