I Know Why the Hyena Laughs

Just sittin' around the carcass of liberalism with a few of my cackling buddies, like John Leo:

Liberals have been slow to grasp the mainstream reaction to the no-values culture, chalking it up to Karl Rove, sinister fundamentalists, racism, or the stupidity of the American voter. Since November 2, the withering contempt of liberals for ordinary Americans has been astonishing. Voting for Bush gave "quite average Americans a chance to feel superior," said Andrew Hacker, a prominent liberal professor at Queens College. We are seeing the bitterness of elites who wish to lead, confronted by multitudes who do not wish to follow. Liberals might one day conclude that while most Americans value autonomy, they do not want a procedural republic in which patriotism, religion, socialization, and traditional values are politically declared out of bounds. Many Americans notice that liberalism nowadays lacks a vocabulary of right and wrong, declines to discuss virtue except in snickering terms, and seems increasingly hostile to prevailing moral sentiments.

Success invariably contains within it the seeds of failure. In this case, the moral equivalence and nonjudgmentalism that so appealed to Americans in the 20th century is already played out in the earliest days of the 21st. We've seen where nihilism gets you, and we're now fighting for our lives and freedom against the bleakest nihilists yet to crawl from the chasm.