Liberal Hubris

A liberal e-mail correspondent (a Marquette faculty member, actually) just sent me this, which has apparently been going around various e-mail chains:

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Dear President Bush,

Congratulations on your victory over all us non-evangelicals. Actually, we’re a bit ticked off here in California, so we’re leaving.

California will now be its own country. And we’re taking all the Blue States with us. In case you are not aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and all of the North East.

We spoke to God, and She agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the new country of California. In fact, God is so excited about it, She’s going to shift the whole country at 4:30 pm EST this Friday. Therefore, please let everyone know they need to be back in their states by then. So you get Texas and all the former slave states. We get the “Governator,” stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. (Okay, we have to keep Martha Stewart, but we can live with that.) We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Opryland. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Old Miss. We get 85% of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get all the technological innovation in Alabama.

We get about two-thirds of the tax revenue, and you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms to support, and we know how much you like that. Did I mention we produce about 70% of the nation’s veggies? But heck the only greens the Bible-thumpers eat are the pickles on their Big Macs. Oh yeah, another thing, don’t plan on serving California wine at your state dinners. From now on it’s imported French wine for you. Ouch, bet that hurts.

Just so we’re clear, the country of California will be pro-choice and anti-war. Speaking of war, we’re going to want all Blue States citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight, just ask your evangelicals. They have tons of kids they’re willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their kids’ caskets coming home. Anyway, we wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction soon. Seriously.

Elitist arrogance is hardly new in American politics, but the open expression of elitist arrogance, and of raw religious bigotry directed at conservative Christians, has actually become mainstream among liberals. They are becoming collectively unhinged. The responses to the Marquette College Republican’s “Adopt a Sniper” fundraiser on the Democratic Underground discussion board were one example of this, as was Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean saying that the Democrats’ conservative opponents are “evil.” Liberalism appears to be in a death spiral.

It’s not just that they hate. It’s that they are proud to be haters.

Bitter because they have been losing, they give vent to their frustration, and their emotional reaction makes them less likely to do the things that might let them win again. Like stop being nasty elitists. Like stop hating conservative Christians.

It’s one thing to win a tough partisan battle. It’s quite another to watch your adversary simply implode. The Republicans have the luxury of doing the latter.