Liberalism As Ego-Gratification, And Little Else...

Via Instapundit, Ann Althouse hits square on the head the utter schizophrenic mentality it takes to embrace liberalism as practiced by the American left, or their political arm, the Democratic party. After hearing a fellow Madison professor describe the outcome of the 2010 midterms by sighing "I'm not endorsing the American voter....They're pretty damn stupid", Althouse holds her nose and dives deep into the liberal mindset:

Welcome to my world: Dane County, Wisconsin, home of people who tell themselves they are the smart people and those who disagree with them must certainly be dumb. They don't go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do. But how would it feel to be intelligent, informed, and well-meaning and to think what conservatives think? Isn't that the right way for an intelligent, informed, and well-meaning person to understand other people? If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don't agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

What is liberal about this attitude toward other people? You wallow in self-love, and what is it you love yourself for? For wanting to shower benefits on people... that you have nothing but contempt for.

Because it is about liberals feeling good about themselves, regardless of the consequences for us. Believing the road to heaven (or secular immortality, in the form of a park bench dedicated to their memory) is paved with good intentions, they profess the best, and turn their back on the results, believing them to be secondary - by a mile - to their insatiable need to inflate their self-worth.

Thus, the greatest crimes of conservatives is not all the Hitler-esque evils they attribute to us, but the fact that we refuse to live for their ego gratification, and that we deny them the sense of self worth they so desperately need to fill their empty, shallow souls. That is why they hate us. And that is why, rather than look into their hearts and confess the obvious, they spin on us with festering rage but no facts, and are left with litte recourse but to sputter, with spittle flying, "You are just so...so...STUPID!!!"

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, those who spend their life searching for self-worth will never find it. Those who spend their lives seeking to show how smart they are will in fact, prove the opposite. To wit: