We are all liberals now.

David Atkins, at digby’s place, writes a lengthy and rather incoherent piece on what he views as the principles of liberalism, which illustrates that he doesn’t have a clue what the hell a liberal is, and that he is totally incapable of any form of coherent thought. He says at one point that, “For a liberal like me, who is primarily interested in the well-being of the American middle-class…” Someone who has that primary interest is not a liberal; he is a smug, ignorant, self-satisfied, greedy pig.

This is the kind of bigot who cheerfully declares that brown people in other countries should be blown to pieces if doing so will preserve the "freedom” of the American middle class people whose well being is his primary interest. Read his piece, if you can stand the smug self adulation which he spews at great length, and you will discern that David has essentially no idea whatever what a “liberal” is, a trait which he shares with most other writers who call themselves liberals.

The dictionary gives a couple of basic meanings for the word, one of which is “tending to give freely; generous,” and I’m sure politicians in the Democratic Party are leaning on that one rather heavily. The more important one is “favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.” Oh yeah, right. How many Obama supporters meet that definition? I was blacklisted from commenting on one “liberal” blog because I refused to admit that Obama was justified in starting the war in Libya.

But the term is more than a word, it is a political theory defined as,

A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

It is difficult to square that “autonomy of the individual” with David’s statement that, “Liberalism is and has always been about intervention.” He goes on to say that liberalism “is unavoidably, inescapably paternalistic in nature,” which contradicts, just a little bit, the concept of “protection from arbitrary authority.”

His jackassery reaches something of a crescendo with his admission that, “Conservatives use force of government as well, of course…” and goes on to say that while liberals are using the “force of government” for good purposes, conservatives are using it for bad purposes. At this point we are all supposed to run to the polls and vote for Obama because, of course, we all agree with David’s definition of “good purposes.”

He’s on a par with the lady who would not vote for Nixon because “his eyes are too close together.” He just uses more words.