The liberals on the left have failed to direct this country forward and upward into a bright new future. The stimulus bill was the latest proof liberal policies are 80% fantasy and 20% naive. Sadly, when you combine these two ingredients you get disaster when reality is mixed in. As was the case with the stimulus bill, which will take another 6 months or more to kick into gear. Sadly (or not, depending on your view) the very little of the economy is tied to government programs, and the money was a fraction of government spending. So too little too late, in the extreme.

This failure has cascaded on the liberals’ credibility – of course. As it should. You ask for emergency spending that bankrupts a generation into the future and promise it will right the economy and it doesn’t, no one is going to give you a second chance on something big and risky and untried.

The response from the left to critics pointing out the obvious? We are racist. Pathetic. And that seals the impression into concrete: liberals in general and this inexperienced White House in particular are in way over their heads. Failing is human nature. Blaming others is bad human behavior.

Sadly, the liberals do not have monopoly on bad behavior. Victor Davis Hanson has a very important article out today, explaining why there is a Pox on both parties, both fringes:

But sadly, I put no credence in liberal outrage. Dozens of Democrats booed Bush during his State of the Union address in 2005; an unhinged Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) called him a liar from the House floor. The currently outraged, like Maureen Down and E.J. Dionne, said little about the 2005 interruption of the President of the United States with catcalls. Congressional efforts at censure failed. Stark, for all I know, remains not an albatross, but an icon of the Left.

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The problem is that the public is not really stupid and has a long memory. It hates hypocrisy as much as it does crudity. Part of Obama’s decline is precisely because of this sudden disingenuousness in which one rises to the top on hardball, Chicago politics and playing identity politics (remember Rev. Wright, Ayers, “typical white people”, clingers, etc.), and then of course wants an end to the crudity (like hoping the music stops only when you have grabbed that last chair).

Or so Obama said that he wanted a sort of end to the acrimony. But once he was elected, we got Eric Holder slurring the nation, the President slurring the police, the environmental jobs czar slurring almost everyone, and a host of satellites like Charles Rangel and Diane Watson leveling charges of racism.

We do bomb throwing well, but we can’t muster high quality leaders apparently. This is one of many articles out assessing the failure of many Americans to respect their fellow Americans. Crass is King. All follow the Begala-Carvelle model to successful arrogance and belittling (it doesn’t bring power, just the appearance of it).

Mark Salter at RCP penned similar analysis:

I think Joe Wilson is a boor (both Joe Wilsons, for that matter, the Republican House member from South Carolina and the former diplomat). I can’t watch Glenn Beck for two minutes without being repulsed by his equal parts maudlin and pompous shtick. But members of Congress who are strangers to decorum and polite discourse, unfortunately, inhabit both parties’ caucuses, in roughly equal numbers. President Bush labored through his state of the union addresses through loud and persistent boos by Democrats. Maxine Waters recently called some senators “Neanderthals,” a term she reserved for moderate members of her own party. She’s considerably less charitable to her Republican colleagues. And the ratings wars on cable television are won by self-aggrandizing, close-minded, loudmouthed conservatives and liberals, unless one thinks Keith Olbermann built his audience share on the strength of his good manners and tolerance.

Excesses of zeal by anti-Obama protestors make me ashamed for my country. As did excesses committed by anti-Bush protestors. Today’s “birthers,” are no more offensive or weird than those who believe the Bush Administration was complicit in planning the attacks of September 11 or invaded Iraq to increase the profits of defense companies. And, yet, it only seems to be rude or asinine behavior on the right that gives the press and other Washington elites the vapors. While on the left it is tolerated, attributed to provocations by the right, or in some cases invested with a virtuous significance it surely lacks.

Forget the biased and befuddled news media. In 1960 that might have been a concern. But in the age of the internet attempts to white wash or hide things usually only heightens the scrutiny and the number of lights that will shine on the act. It is the voters who the parties and the political industrial complex (pols, power brokers, news media, analysts, consultants) need to watch. As Hanson notes, we are not stupid and we have long memories. And we don’t like crass and childish.

I ran across this article from a left leaning gent at RCP, which again touches on the them of fringes behaving badly. He lambasts the Tea Party demonstration with classic liberal hubris, nose fully in the air. But he can see enough of the dynamics to make a interesting assessment:

I’m probably one of the few people who was on the Mall for a big anti-Vietnam War rally and also for some of this event. However, for this one, I came down on my bike, got there around noon, and left after about 15 minutes. I didn’t see the huge crowd that ultimately assembled. When I passed the Reflecting Pool, there were more tourists than protesters, and I had to get almost to the lawn on the Capitol before I saw a big concentration of protesters.

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Do they fit the stereotype of being white, small-town, uneducated racists? Not much racism, but otherwise I would say they fit the stereotype enough to make me skeptical that this is an important political movement. This country is becoming more urban, less white, and more educated.

I was down on the Mall as well. Sounds like this guy was there at 10 AM, not 12 noon. But the essence of his claim is small town white = uneducated. He still hasn’t figured out that our slow southern accents are meant to fool city dwellers into thinking they can think faster than us! But I digress. It is a stupid, self promoting and disrespectful view. It is no wonder there is anger boiling up between left and right, they can’t stop insulting each other to paper over their failures (conservatives, you did lose massively in 2006 and 2008). But here is the interesting admission from this denizen of the left:

I come back to my view that this is white, small-town America making its last stand. However, I think, also, that the progressive elite is making a last stand. My guess is that doubts are mounting among many independent voters about whether they want such a highly-charged politics. I am sticking with my bet that the Democrats will hold onto their House and Senate majorities as well as the Presidency through the elections of 2016, but relative to six months ago I feel that I am depending more on Republican incompetence than overall political trends to win that bet.

And I thought I was Pollyannish on the conservatives and GOP the last two election cycles. I think Democrats are going to take a pounding, because the Tea Party movement is made up of the silent majority and is heavily independent. Many of the people there this weekend are not politically active. I agree that the one thing holding the tidal wave back from the Dems is conservatives behaving poorly. And efforts to avoid repeating mistakes is causing huge rifts on the right.

I note the bitter wall that has created between Charles Johnson at LGF and the purists on the right (who, once again, are trying to define ‘true conservatives’ so that they don’t have to negotiate or plat nice with other, lesser human beings). I think Founding Bloggers explained it best:

The blog wars are out of control right now.

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We want to add that one of the aspects that is so frustrating about this particular blog war, is what is getting lost in the shuffle. Charles is making some extremely valid points that need to be critically examined.

We do not want our defense of Jim Hoft to serve as an excuse to pile on Charles Johnson. We would rather turn it into a chance to bring some attention to the things LGF has been writing about which we vehemently agree with.

He has devoted more than one post to the Obama-Hitler signs on display at Tea Parties. We too find them disgusting and counter productive, and have said so publicly.

There are serious problems with message control (or self control) on the right. I get the feeling Jim Hoft is an outstanding human being. I link to him often. And I don’t link to him often because this decent human being can go over the top in a blink of an eye. He and others have become the guiding light of the true conservatives in exile. Great – just remember being pure means being political impotent.

I am not a fan of Stacy McCain either. Just search ‘whore’ on his site and you can figure it out for yourself. The guy has serious inferiority issues with sexually active women and science. Brings out the beast in the guy.

Johnson tried, as I have, to bridge gaps with the less scientifically inclined, more religious, to stand on the common ground of conservative principles. But if you dare challenge the purists on the right, they respond like the purists on the left. With anger and vitriol. It is a disaster.

When I thought I had seen it all, Ed Morrissey posted the most inane thing I have ever seen (which is just not normal for Morrissey, who I have a deep respect for – but we are all fallible humans). After two election cycles, and soon a 3rd, where the fringes attack the center of America (its heart and soul) and pays a huge price at the polls, Morrissey seems to have found countenance in the idea the true fringe crazies are in the moderate middle!

These days, commentators focus on “right-wing extremism” as the most dire threat to the nation.  Politicians talk about the rise of racism in a country that just elected its first President with African heritage.  Neither offer compelling definitions of the danger, and Jesse Walker of Reasonexplains that they have no compelling definition — only paranoia.  The paranoia of the center, Walker argues, is much more dangerous, because it has the power to infringe on rights that the extreme right and left never have:

Un-‘Effing-Believable. The essence here is the drama queen reaction of the right, assuming they were the neo-nazi, violence-prone extremists warned about in a DHS report, means the center is paranoid. That projection was reflected back so hard it must have hurt.

The left and right are about spent. They have spent themselves on radical concepts and spectacular failures. The conservative Congress blamed Bush for their over spending and pork. The left blames racism because their stimulus bill did nothing. And now it is the dangerous middle who threaten America.

I’m with Hanson, this generation has no class, no clue and no honor. We forgot to pass on the one thing the greatest generation demonstrated to us. Respect, humility and determination. I am looking forward to seeing what my children’s generation will be able to do. It is coming to be their time now. We wasted ours.