In a chapter-long  accompanying essay "The Mother of All Liberalism, The Limbaugh Prize Entry", I have laid out, with some humor, also with seriousness, but in a generally correct manner, the "why" of modern liberalism. In the process, we isolated the "liberal" gene, laid it bare and naked, for all to see, with the single caveat that it really isn't "liberal", so recommend the term be discontinued, at least as a means to describe that brood.
    Liberalism, along with "capitalism", are words with enough double meanings to serve men with evil purposes better than honest men. The language of double meanings has been used by Goebbels, the Soviets, and the American Left every since Karl Marx made that hole in men's souls seem respectable in the 19th Century. I recall watching Malcolm Muggeridge, just before he died, gently scold William Buckley, who had used "liberal" too loosely in an off-hand remark. "But I am a liberal, Bill. I am just not of the Left." When true conservatives can consider Thomas Jefferson to be liberal, calling Barack Obama one as well is just plain wrong. But you can see who this device benefits in the end. And who it defames.
    In that vein, I wish conservatives would remove such terms from their sermons, and come up with words or modifiers that are less conducive to manipulation by the Left as ammunition against us in the popular culture, where, less we forget, little baby voters are being spit out every day in a 100 to 1 ratio to every Rush Baby whose Mom accidentally finds the AM band on the radio. As before, I warn you here, the pop culture is a territory the Left owns, and a place where conservatives, much less the GOP, seem disinclined to venture...much less fight to retake.
     The title is dedicated Rush Limbaugh, America's Sergeant-Major, (still with that fire in his belly) who recently asked his listeners to come up with the source of (modern)"liberalism".
     Had he offered a prize this would be my submission, for it goes to the heart of the pathology that is American leftism, as well as debunking any notion that there is anything "liberal" about it. From Marx to Obama, they all indeed do share many things in common, but these are all opposites of "liberal"; from "vengeful" ,"spiteful" and "ungrateful" to "hateful" ,"envious" and "stingy".

     By understanding the "why" of liberalism, and just how ancient its roots run, not to mention that there is not even a shred of philosophical content to it, we can then turn to the "how" of it, specifically the how of confronting it, engaging it and defeating it.
     Think of it this way: when debating Creation or God with an avowed atheist, it isn't really very hard to discover whether that person is truly an atheist or not. Once he establishes that he is really a pagan rock worshipper, it really isn't very difficult to steer the debate to why  he worships rocks, thus taking away all his intellectual credibility. God really isn't relevant any longer, as the rock hound was only using Him as straw man in the first place. All you have to do is find the button, then, expose it to the world.
    
     All members of the Left have a hot button. It's just for us to find it. And it doesn't matter if he/she is a bottom feeding freshman at CUNY, (the dailyKos armies), a coffee klatch suburbanite on the West Coast (Cindy Sheehan), or a button-down PhD suit from the UC (Chicago) faculty (Obama's various czars). They are all defined by what they hate, and what they hate definitely is not the unification and freedom of the workers of the world. After all, America's already done that.
    Of course, the older, first generation lefties, holdovers from the 1960s, are more mature in trying to disguise that one vulnerable button. Even Bill Ayers has a hot button. In fact, I'd bet I can guess it. Even today, he talks about the "murders" of the US government in SE Asia, only today rather than an excuse for mayhem and murder by his Weather Underground gang, but as a matter-of-fact historical given (it's the little words, the "as if's" that give them away), as if those murders actually did occur, and those murders were a matter of national policy.
    I've had that conversation before, and interestingly from other Chicagoans, who finally left Chi-town to became expectant trust baby-hippies in the southwest. As gentle and sweet a nest one ever met...until you found and pushed that button, sometimes just in random conversation. It was like all the windows in the room had suddenly been shuddered, the room gone dark, just like their dark eyes, black with rage. In an instant they were eighteen again, all sitting around the garage, Canned Heat blaring on the stereo, passing around a bottle of Johnny Walker, each trying to out-yell the other about the pigs, the war, the establishment and whatever injustice the Trib happened to report that day.
   The children of affluence, with planned structured lives in a world they clearly didn't like, these were the "happiest" days of their miserable lives!...just sitting around hating things in between pulls on the whiskey bottle or a joint.
   Eventually some would escape for a simpler life, but others, like Ayers, would rush into the breach.
   They all have this button, and once pushed, the rage is as new as if My Lai had happened only last week. On a few occasion I've been able to walk (debate) at least halfway down the trail with them, as I like to probe and needle, trying to get them to express any type of logic, or critical thinking to debunk this notion or that untrue fact, and can only comment, as Bob Kerry once said about Bill Clinton, they are uncommonly good liars, especially when lying to themselves. Fact and truth have nothing to do with it. It is raw emotion drawn from memories of the "best" time of their life.
 
    But now we are met on a different battlefield, for the mission now is no longer to save them, or convince them of the error of their ways. They have the power, and quite frankly, the willingness, to defeat us and Liberty completely, still, for the most part, totally oblivious to the end result. We can no longer be concerned that they don't understand what they are doing. A few, like Ayers, do.
    My view is that exposing this hate in all its glory is their greatest Achilles Heel, and we have to use this power like a bow and arrow. Or maybe a baseball bat across the shins. At least a rolled up newspaper across the nose.
    We will do much better in dealing with"liberalism" if we first understand that underneath the political ideas of the Left we are fighting a deeply psychological one...and a very ancient one indeed...which seems to have overtaken a large segment of the American psyche.

Vassar Bushmills