Piling On

It's hard being a Republican these days. As if the President's 28% approval rating and the huge disapproval of the Iraq war weren't enough, one now needs a cheat sheet to keep track of who, exactly, the enemy is supposed to be. I mean, it's not that long ago that liberals were (somehow) all on their way to becoming radical Muslims. Remember this gem, courtesy of Ann Coulter?

When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that [American Taliban supporter] John Walker [Lindh] is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.

Good ole Ann. She knew how to operate. Take all the things that Republicans hate and then blame them all on liberals. And take everything that Republicans love and claim that liberals are ruining it. Love God? Liberals hate Him. Hate Muslims? Liberals want to institute Islam as the state religion. Like babies? Liberals want to murder all of them in the womb. Hate...well, you get the idea.

But now Dinesh D'Souza comes along and fucks everything up. Yes, it's true that he manages, like a good Republican, to blame 9/11 on some combination of terrorists and liberals. But then he does the unthinkable: he offers apologies for radical Islamic terrorists! But, but, but...that's what liberals do. What are you doing to me, Dinesh?

To be fair, Dinesh does manage to make liberals the excuse for blowing up buildings. It seems that radical fundamentalist Muslims want to kill Americans because we Americans abuse our freedom. How? By "the sexual liberty we grant to women and the corruption of childhood innocence by our vulgar and licentious popular culture." That's right. We tell women that they are free to fuck (or not) whomever they like. How dare we! And we created things like condoms and birth control pills to give them some control over their own bodies. The horror! I think it's pretty clear that we liberals were just asking for it.

Of course, the downside to this position is that it means that Christian conservatives have to align themselves with Islamic fundamentalists. Not the blow-shit-up Islamic fundamentalists, D'Souza is quick to point out. Just the Burqa-imposing, gay-stoning, sex-is-evil-unless-it's-with-one-of-my-three-wives Islamic fundamentalists.

That's leaves me trying to figure out whose side I'm really on. I was a college liberal, after all. I put Clinton/Gore signs up on my door back in college (an act that made me hugely popular with the nostalgic-for-Reagan student body at Hampden-Sydney). Hell, as recently as last July, I was a college professor liberal. That's the worst sort, too! So does that make me a budding member of the Taliban? Or does it mean that I'm the depraved American that the brave conservatives of the Taliban are fighting against? I'm confused.

I can only imagine what the Republican faithful are going through.