Don't Be Downhearted, Writes Barone

If you are a conservative this morning you are probably feeling downhearted. After all the heavy lifting that conservatives have done, since 9/11 under George W. Bush, and back in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, how come conservatives don’t get no respect? Here we are with $3.00 gasoline, no end in sight in Iraq, a big immigration problem, a spendthrift Congress, and the president’s poll numbers are down in the low 30s.

Just don’t forget, writes Michael Barone, that despite all the gloom and doon we are living the legacy of Reagan and Thatcher and that they were never that popular.

Clinton and Blair, the center-left response to Reagan and Thatcher, were popular because they didn’t challenge the status quo, the status quo created by the hard work of Reagan and Thatcher.

It is in the nature of things that the right, while sharply defining the issues and winning most serious arguments, should also stir more bitter opposition than the soothing, consensus-minded center-left. All the more so because Old Media in this country, more than in Britain, is dominated by a left that incessantly peppers the right with ridicule and criticism, while it lavishes the center-left with celebration and praise.

The other thing to remember is that the left can’t deal with criticism. Bill O’Reilly reports on efforts to disinvite mainstream conservative politicians from giving commencement speeches at two major universities. What are we to think of the professors and students at the New School in New York who want to disinvite Senator John McCain from the school’s commencement, and at Boston College who want to disinvite Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice from attending?

Ex-Brit conservative writer John Derbyshire tells the awful truth about liberals who don’t want to pollute their delicate minds with the voice of the other side.

Here you see one of the paradoxes of our strange times. Our women dress like sluts; our kids are taught about buggery in elementary school... yet so far as anything to do with the actual reality of actual human nature is concerned, we are as prim and shockable as a bunch of Quaker schoolmarms. After 40 years of lying to ourselves, we are now terrified of the truth.

Let us admit that we conservatives lie to ourselves. And we deserve to face the consequences. But imagine you are a liberal. Think of all the things that liberals have been lying about to themselves for the last 40 years. And then think about how it makes complete sense for liberals to be shouting down and disinviting distinguished conservative visitors to the university, and forbidding uncomfortable ideas from seeing the light of day on campus.

If you had got everything wrong for 40 years, how would you react to disturbing and frightening ideas?