Second-Best Jane Smiley Smack-Down

Bruce Thornton puts the smack down on Jane Smiley's recent Slate column in which she basically argued that liberals are smart, and conservatives are dumb.

It's the second-best fisking I've seen. The best was by Supernatural Rabbit Scribe, in a private e-mail. But he doesn't have a blog, so no link love for him.

Here's a good bit:

"Of course, Smiley doesn't mention that blue-state hero John Brown, who in 1856 murdered five unarmed men on Pottawatomie Creek. The left has always had a soft spot for those who murder for the right cause, which is why Stalin and Mao probably have more fans on university campuses than Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher."

It reminds me of a funny post Bill from INDC Journal did a while back, in which a commenter asked "You think she's aware that the people on her t-shirt account for nearly 100,000,000 dead?" Bill's succinct response was "Well ... 100,000,000 'enemies of the people,' if that's what you mean ..." (You have to read the post to see the picture).

With that in mind, it kills me that a liberal can say, with a straight face, that Bush is Hitler, but then openly admire Marx's progeny - Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che (just some of the more prominent examples).