May 31, 2005
In response to the hundreds of--O.K., O.K., one or two--questions I've received about my increasing crankiness toward Liberals, allow me to offer this anecdote.
On Saturday I attended the high school graduation of my younger daughter. There were a half dozen student speakers, all of whom were mercifully brief, and most of whom were entertaining, even. But the featured speaker, the commencement speaker if high school graduations have such, was a former teacher at the school, now pursuing a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies.
He declared, "It's almost a cliche, but each generation is supposed to leave the world better." He then paused dramatically, grinned, and remarked that his generation had failed to do this because "the wheels came off around 1980". He then almost yelled, "But you can fix this. Heck, as long as you don't take pictures of yourselves next to naked prisoners, you'll do much better."
This was a high school graduation ceremony. But apparently our Renaissance scholar found it just another opportunity to demonstrate the Liberal tendency to be smug, arrogant, and rude.
I wish the noted philosopher Eric J. Cartman had been there. He would have known what to say.