For reasons that can only be parsed by psychiatrists or anthropologists, Americans sit up and listen when an artist, in particular, an actor, speaks.  Or, in the case of Alec Baldwin, one who writes, in this instance, on the Huffingtonpost web site.  It's curious that a man who earns money pretending he's someone else, regardless of how convincing he might be, should command our attention, much less our respect in areas so obviously outside his scope of expertise.

Yet here is Baldwin, in a quote that mangles and abuses the English language, making the case that Senator McCain just isn't up to the job of president:

The problem with John McCain is not his age, it's his condition.  McCain's true lack of the abundant energy required to function as president, even performing the job on the most basic level, is what must be questioned.

If it weren't nonsensical, this would absurd, because there's simply no evidence that McCain lacks the energy required to perform as president.  Moreover, it reflects the intellectually effete arguments that emanate from the left, which seem frozen in a kind of adolescent level of sophistication.  Baldwin takes it to the next level of self-embarrassment:

McCain's ideas are too old, not the Senator himself. McCain's view of this country, his view of the world, are too old.

Whether it's Baldwin or Penn or any number of other actors who strut and fret their hour upon the stage, when they venture into politics, we're treated to the full gamut of their acting skills, which are long on emotional appeal and short on evidence.  McCain is a man whose values are traditional, which is to say, they're instinctively conservative.  His many ventures down the maverick path notwithstanding, he is a fiscal conservative and is pro-military.  If those are 'old ideas,' we wish they could be cloned to his ninety-nine colleagues in the senate.

What Bladwin is referring to, of course, is that McCain isn't hip, he lacks that upper-West-side cultural panache, that cutting edge smartness that the academics and artists share.  It's just not hip to be against the destruction of innocent life in the womb, to believe, as have millions of Americans over the past two centuries, that we have the right to bear arms, and that the best way to provide economic opportunity is through lower taxes and regulation.  For Baldwin, Obama, and their liberal legions, those are 'old ideas' that reflect an 'old' view of the world.

That takes us to the American exceptionalism that is the bane of the left, which, in their view, is most obnoxiously expressed by our redoubtable ability to project power, economically and militarily.  In their post-modern world, where Castro is on the same moral and political plane as Reagan, where America's alleged foibles far outweigh the good it has done, McCain's ideas and world view are out-of-step.  It's Obama who is hip when he says he'll sit down with the leaders of Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, without conditions--now that's the chaos theory level of diplomacy that's way ahead of the curve.

What's disturbing is that because so many Americans are so deeply embedded in a culture that rewards ignorance and punishes wisdom, and, that is convinced that everything vital to life exists in the cultural petri dish they inhabit, they enthusiastically soak up this palaver from Baldwin and other leftists. 

Arguing against it makes you seem, in the eyes of the cognoscenti, well, 'old,' and that's just not cool.

The denial of history has always been a threat to humans, in large part because it consigns them to repeating it.  The latest disease in this genus of cultural pathologies is less a matter of denial than ignorance.  A prime example is the left's response to the senate's approval of the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) law, which governs the communication intercepts known as warrantless wiretaps.

Most Americans correctly understand that when faced with asymmetrical warfare in the form of Islamic extremists, a shadowy, omnipresent enemy sans uniforms, special measures must be taken to safeguard the nation.  Stipulating that there are checks and balances in the law, we can be reasonably assured that the measures will enhance our protection while not compromising the rights of innocents.  Yet the left has become apoplectic over this, confident as they are that civil rights are being routinely abridged.  Writing in Salon, Glenn Greenwald characterizes the Democrats who supported the bill as cowards and turncoats.

For those who have waded through these tiresome diatribes, one theme is always apparent:  Without so much as a scintilla of evidence they make sweeping and politically self-serving accusations and smugly conclude that the president is exceeding his authority, and that our government is compromising our rights.  He then excavates the Church hearings back in the early 70s which the left predictably trots out to showcase an example of government abuse.

For Greenwald and his liberal soul-mates evidence of wrongdoing, no matter how slight or incidental define the norm which progressively recalibrates their regulatory reflex such that it's on permanent hair-trigger.  Since the scent of conspiracy is congenital, they smell it everywhere which blunts their judgment and therefore their credibility.

It's a fascinating study in paradoxes when these people become exercised over non-issues such as warrantless wiretaps and celebrate habeas corpus rights for alien combatants on foreign soil, but sleep-walk their way through the fact that then nation hasn't been attacked in seven years.  Credit, you see, is filtered through their refined political bias which is on autopilot, relieving them of the burden of making informed decisions concerning public policy.

Excoriating President Bush is a facile exercise, a parlor game to entertain like-minded liberals.  That it's an intellectually hermetic process is conveniently ignored, because the goal trumps the truth.  There's a reason a number of moderate Democrats voted for this bill and that's because they understand this threat is real and that modest concessions that include measures to obviate encroachment into the lives of innocent citizens is reasonable and, indeed, necessary.

Would that the Greenwalds of the world had the common sense to grasp this, but that's yet another virtue that's rapidly moving from endangered to extinction.