Airstrip One demonstrates so much democratic socialist failure. First, they outlawed guns, and now only criminals own guns. Then, they moved to outlaw knives, even kitchen knives, but stabbings continued. Homicide rates are increasing for both gun and knife attacks, which is exactly what politically incorrect people said would happen when law-abiding people are disarmed to the advantage of criminals. (See also, Chicago.)

The other form of violence that is increasingly popular, especially in diverse, multicultural cities, is acid attacks. Throwing acid in the faces of people, especially women, has long been a thing in the fetid third-world cesspools from which Britain and other western countries import the majority of their cheap labor force and Labor-voting voter base. You know it’s bad when news media start publishing “What to do in case of an acid attack” articles.

But don’t worry, Air Strip One’s Government is on the case and is moving to outlaw acid.

If you missed it: last weekend, beloved left-wing Sharia advocate Linda Sarsour called for “jihad” (her word) against President Trump.

The Left promptly fell over themselves, not to denounce her use of the term; but rather to denounce anyone so bigoted as to think that the word could have a violent connotation.

Sarsour provided the necessary fig leaf, by bracketing her call for jihad with blather about how Peaceful Mohammed was totes about Speaking Truth To Power. But imagine if, during the Obama administration, a far-right Christian activist – the type who advocates Christian Reconstruction, say, and who had excused an abortion clinic bombing – had called defiantly for “holy war” against President Obama. The Left would have called for that activist’s imprisonment.

We live in a world, remember, where the Left thinks that using a crosshairs metaphor in your election advertising is direct incitement to violence; as is an Internet joke (meme) in which a corporate logo is being pounded on.

But calling for “holy war”? (which is what “jihad” means) No problem…provided the call is left-wing and/or Islamist; that is, directed against America, its President and/or the Right. Once more, Islam and the Left are allies.

22 year old Otto Warmbier died today 17 months after being tortured and imprisoned by the communist regime of North Korea. We can criticize his foolishness for going to North Korea in the first place, but what he suffered he clearly did not deserve. Nor did he deserve to be attacked by the left, who claimed to the contrary that he got what deserved for his “white privilege.” (Part of a disturbing trend on the progressive left toward the dehumanization of other people based on their perceived “privilege.”)

Update: HuffPo has apparently been stealth-editing their original story.

Torturing and murdering people is what socialist and communist regimes do. It was also a favorite pastime of Communist mass-murder Che Guevara, whose visage can be seen on T-shirts and banners wherever “Democratic Socialists” gather to discuss how they would like to run America, and what to do with people who, in their view, do not deserve their “privilege.”

Now we know for sure.

Protesters campaigning against Sharia Law were met with a number of counter-demonstrations on Saturday…

Sharia is the law of Islam…The rules of sharia come from Quranic commandments and the hadiths…Sharia significantly restricts the freedom of women and allows for extreme punishments for violations such as adultery, blasphemy, and apostasy. [ed: and homosexuality] Sharia is the basis of laws in Islamic countries, both Sunni and Shia.

A press release from the ACT! for America website reads: “This is a march against Sharia law and for human rights…”

However, many marches were disrupted by counter-demonstrators, who accused participants of “Islamaphobia”…

The article makes clear that the counter-demonstrators were lefties in masks, many associated with Antifa. One threw urine on Lauren Southern (of The Rebel Media).

Let’s summarize.

1. Sharia is a legal system. Like any legal system, it must be supreme within a given territory or it doesn’t work. In the U.S. context, Sharia’s advocates basically want it to replace U.S. law.
2. If you march (demonstrate) in favor of U.S. law over Sharia, Antifa protestors are going to physically attack you and call you “Islamophobic”.

It follows that Antifa protestors favor Sharia and want it to replace U.S. law. Which of course is based on the Constitution; which Antifa therefore must also oppose.

If it isn’t so, it’s up to Antifa to clarify it – by denouncing Sharia. In the meantime: Gays, women, and patriotic Americans everywhere ought to find it alarming.

Dateline Airstrip One: “Gays Against Sharia” is a group of gays in Britain who don’t fancy living under ISIS-style sharia law (what with the beheadings, stonings, defenestrations, female genital mutilations and other minor annoyances). Gays Against Sharia plans to hold a march in opposition to Islamic Supremacy. Pro-Sharia, Left-Wing gays who automatically side with the enemies of Western Civilization, are planning a counter-protest to demonstrate their willing subjugation to their new masters.

LGBT activists have reacted with fury, insisting the event is nothing more than the cynical hijacking of gay rights by the “far right” as a cover for Islamophobia. Two groups, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, and Action for Trans Health, are arranging a counter-protest against the march.

“As queers, we know what it’s like for right-wingers to hate us – so we won’t be divided like this.”

Right, because it’s better to be murdered by Islamic Supremacists who hate you than shunned by right-wingers who “hate” you.

The first step to solving a problem for real, is: Naming it honestly.

As Mark Steyn points out (hat tip V), our leftie-globalist-academic Superiors want us to believe that “sowing division” is what’s wrong with the endless stream of mass murders by Muslim terrorists. Because the desirable opposite is “unity”, led by those same Superiors.

Thus, they subtly equate their critics with Muslim terrorists. If, say, you’re a free-market populist who rejects the elite consensus, you’re as bad as a Muslim mass murderer. Because you’re also “sowing division”.

It’s similar to how the Left represents “hate speech” (i.e., criticism or rejection of the Left) as a form of violence, unprotected by the First Amendment. Under such insane terms, the Left is allowed to attack you with physical violence because they are only protecting themselves from the “violence” that you were about to think, or say.

Re: the London attacks, British media says they were done by “men of Mediterranean coloring”. It has a courtroom precision to it, which is nice, but also don’t say Muslim.

London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, did at least call them “cowardly terrorists”. And Prime Minister Theresa May slammed the “evil ideology of Islamist extremism” – but then went back to calling for “unity”, plus Internet censorship. As opposed to, say, deporting the UK’s known Muslim radicals and improved vetting of Muslim immigrants, or better enforcement of the UK’s existing laws against inciting violence.

It’s beyond question that the murderers were doing it for Allah. One can only hope that the good people of the UK will wake up.

Last week, social justice fascists in Portlandia shut down a burrito cart because it was operated by white women, and then went on to publish a list of “ethnic” restaurants run by white people so that enlightened progressives could boycott them.

This week, a self-described “Mexican” writing in a lefty rag says there’s nothing wrong culinary cultural exchanges.

The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that’s what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain’t it? The Spaniards didn’t know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn’t care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn’t care much for wine, so embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawerma from Lebanese, adding pork, and making it something as quintessentially Mexicans as a corrupt PRI?

In other words, food gets better because of the willingness to experiment with techniques and ingredients used by others; to mix and match them, often producing new dishes that are better than baseline dishes. Gee, some folks would even call this, “Embracing Diversity.”

He concludes:

To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can’t possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they’re people of color, and that we’re always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We’re no one’s victims, and who says we can’t beat the wasichu at their game?

Fortunately, plenty of white progressives were available in the comments to lecture the disobedient minority and set the boy’s mind right.

Video won’t embed, but this is the link.

Orlando is not the last time terrorists-of-a-certain-religion will mass murder American civilians. This is a fact.

The Democrats will do nothing to prevent this from happening again, and the Republicans will do little. Any approach that would actually eliminate the threat would be politically unpalatable. The Democrats are proposing, as is their wont, gun control legislation. Supposedly, this is in response to the slaughter, but in reality, they wanted to impose gun control anyway, and they are politicizing the events of Sunday morning in order to push their agenda.

Their proposed gun control legislation would use the Government’s arbitrary, secret, completely lacing in due process (and therefore Unconstitutional) Terror Watch List to deny Americans the right to purchase firearms. Also, they will outlaw firearms arbitrarily designated as “assault weapons,” (because they look kinda scary scary and military). But France’s extreme and draconian gun control laws didn’t stop either of the recent Paris massacres. What the Democrats are proposing would only create a larger pool of disarmed victims.

There will be another massacre. Are you willing to bet that there will not be?

It may happen at a shopping mall, or a theme park, or a football, or a church. American men, women, and children are going to die with the sounds of ‘Allahu Akbar’ ringing in their ears. And as the Imam at the press conference said, no one can predict where or when it will happen. It probably won’t happen at the White House or the Capitol (they’re gonna keep *their* guns); which is why the politicians really don’t care too much about stopping it.

So, here is my question: Are you willing to completely entrust your life to the same indifferent, incompetent Government that checked out Omar Mateen and decided he was not a threat? The same Government that is importing 200,000 immigrants from Islamic regions every year with the same or lower quality of background check that was given to Omar Mateen and Tashfeen Malik?

Or are you going to take your safety and survival as a personal responsibility?

On display at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum, a functional, 14-Karat gold toilet titled “America.”

“Its participatory nature, in which viewers are invited to make use of the fixture individually and privately, allows for an experience of unprecedented intimacy with an artwork. Cattelan’s toilet offers a wink to the excesses of the art market, but also evokes the American dream of opportunity for all, its utility ultimately reminding us of the inescapable physical realities of our shared humanity.”

“America” as a gold-plated toilet; Ooh, that’s so very clever, so very, very clever. I am sure that will show all those in-bred hicks from flyover country how very, very clever is the artistic palate of the New Tork sophisticate.

It seems as though more and more news items lately have a common element: After decades of steadily attacking, hollowing out or abandoning its own culture, the Western world is showing major signs of social, political and moral decay.

Personally, I am no traditionalist. I think all traditions should be examined in the light of logic and justice – and revised or replaced, where they’re found lacking. This is one reason why I have never called myself a conservative (and have tried not to become GP’s “main blogger”).

But my intention, as a non-traditionalist, is to ‘keep things real’ and build on what’s best in the Western tradition: which is what Jonah Goldberg has called the Lockean Revolution, the idea that the individual owns herself – and is not owned by the Massa, feudal Lord, Village, Community, Tribe, Race, Party, State or Ummah. The leftists who have attacked the West from within, for decades now, have been after the exact opposite idea.

A civilization/culture doesn’t survive unless its young women and men will mostly (regardless of particular individuals’ sexual orientation or practices) do the following together: (a) get along; (b) find a genuine sense of purpose and meaning in that culture/civilization; and therefore (c) actually create and raise new generations for it. We are seeing more and more signs that the West is decrepit, on all three counts.

I could talk about the West’s declining birthrates, or its anti-child and self-terminating “environmentalism”, or its ever-growing political insanity. But, just to restrict it to current events, GayPatriot’s main page presently notices such news items as:

• Prominent public figures displaying little or no concept of personal responsibility.
• Little girls who have been programmed to screech anger and contempt at the rest of society.
• A president leading a government that can’t rationally address the threat of a major epidemic.
• Paid public journalists who can’t think rationally about said leader/government.
• The State ordering individuals to violate their own conscience.

And we can add more items:

• Westerners converting to Islam, then carrying out jihad against their own societies. When a culture’s intelligentsia do everything they can for decades to attack/destroy their own culture’s major religion, you don’t get a wonderful era of progressive enlightenment. No, no, no. You get the culture’s “average people” turning to a different religion, probably a hostile one.
• Especially, you begin to get the culture’s teenage girls doing it.

I recommend that last link, Lee Smith’s opinion piece titled “Why the Teenage Girls of Europe are Joining ISIS”, for your attention. When a given civilization can no longer persuade its own teenage girls to sign on with it: it’s cooked.

From the Federalist, gay marriage as a tool for subjugation of the individual to the state.

The theory behind gay marriage, in short, was the theory behind the entire secular left: society and the state are the all-powerful forces on which the life of the individual depends, and the most important political task—indeed, the most important task in life—is getting this irresistible power on your side. Once you gain social and political power, you hold on to it by making your preferred views mandatory, a catechism everyone must affirm, while suppressing all heretical views. In this case, to gain social acceptance of homosexuality, you make the affirmation of gay marriages mandatory while officially suppressing any dissenting religious views.

Exactly so. There is no reason to force ordained ministers to perform gay weddings, no reason to force bakers to provide cakes for gay weddings, no reason to force florists and photographers to participate in gay weddings… except to enforce the idea that individual must bow to whoever wields the power of the state.

Just one link today and no lengthy comment for it. All I can say is: This is what happens when America wills itself to be led by a president who truly, deep down, does not understand or believe in America.

Two upstate New York Radio hosts were fired today for disagreeing with the City of Rochester’s decision to pay for elective genital mutilation surgery.

Entercom Rochester on Thursday announced the firings of Kimberly Ray and Barry Beck from WBZA, calling their comments “hateful” and saying they don’t represent the station.

Ray referred to someone seeking gender reassignment surgery as “a nut job.” Beck equated the issue to having the city pay for breast enhancement or liposuction for a mentally ill woman.

It’s baffling to any sensible person why debt-ridden cities should be paying for elective surgery anyway.

On the other hand, leftist clown Ed Schultz is quitting radio.

A study recently found that the reason immigrants favor Democrats 2 to 1 over Republicans is because immigrants want what the Democrats promise: Free [Stuff] from the Government. The more immigrants that get imported, the larger the Free [Stuff] Army (FSA) grows, even in Texas.

So, the Republican Party is doomed… and pro-Amnesty, pro-Mass Immigration types like Jeb Bush, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John McCain… are eager to facilitate the demographic Kervorkianing of the GOP.

One problem though; the economy is way, way past its freeloader carrying capacity. Our actual private economy is in decline; a decline hidden only by massive borrowing and spending by Government at all levels. (Government spending is actually a component of the Gross Domestic Product; which is kind of like if I counted the money I spent every year as part of my annual income). A declining economy and an expanding Government are mutually unsustainable. The USA today is in very much the position of the USSR in the 1980s; except instead of a bloated military complex, we have a bloated entitlement complex.

The appetite for Free [Stuff] from the Government is infinite; but economic resources are limited. The new Democrat majority can vote for everything their greedy little hearts desire; but at some point, there’s no money to pay for it. We are already beyond that point.

If a hypothetical male were asked, “What is your opinion on women’s rights?” and he answered, “I take an Islamic view of the rights of women,” should this hypothetical man be:

A. Called out as a chauvinist and a misogynist?

B. Praised for his multicultural tolerance and openness to social diversity?

For the progressive feminist left, this is apparently quite a conundrum.

Victor Davis Hanson published a memorable piece in the National Review last week entitled “America as Pill Bug.”  The pill bug or the roly-poly bug is one that turns itself into a ball when it feels threatened.  Hanson writes:

That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration.

On August 4, U.S. embassies across the Middle East simply closed on the basis of intelligence reports of planned al-Qaeda violence. The shutdown of 21 diplomatic facilities was the most extensive in recent American history.

Yet we still have over a month to go before the twelfth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, an iconic date for radical Islamists.

Such preemptive measures are no doubt sober and judicious. Yet if we shut down our entire public profile in the Middle East on the threat of terrorism, what will we do when more anti-American violence arises? Should we close more embassies for more days, or return home altogether?

Hanson makes an excellent point about the way the Obama administration’s closure of embassies is likely to be viewed in the Arab world and around the globe.  Although, as Jeff pointed out in a post last week, the administration may have ulterior motives–by trying to create a distraction–by closing the embassies in this manner, the reality is that the interpretation of the administration’s actions by our international foes is likely to proceed in a manner similar to that Hanson envisions in his article.

Hanson looks at the example of Libya and Syria to illustrate that the administration’s “lead from behind” strategy is not working, and that it appears to be counterproductive:

Instead, the terrorists are getting their second wind, as they interpret our loud magnanimity as weakness — or, more likely, simple confusion. They increasingly do not seem to fear U.S. retaliation for any planned assaults. Instead, al-Qaeda franchises expect Americans to adopt their new pill-bug mode of curling up until danger passes.

Our enemies have grounds for such cockiness. President Obama promised swift punishment for those who attacked U.S. installations in Benghazi and killed four Americans. So far the killers roam free. Rumors abound that they have been seen publicly in Libya.

Instead of blaming radical Islamist killers for that attack, the Obama reelection campaign team fobbed the assault off as the reaction to a supposedly right-wing, Islamophobic videomaker. That yarn was untrue and was greeted as politically correct appeasement in the Middle East.

All these Libyan developments took place against a backdrop of “lead from behind.” Was it wise for American officials to brag that the world’s largest military had taken a subordinate role in removing Moammar Qaddafi — in a military operation contingent on approval from the United Nations and the Arab League but not the U.S. Congress?

No one knows what to do about the mess in Syria. But when you do not know what to do, it is imprudent to periodically lay down “red lines.” Yet the administration has done just that to the Bashar al-Assad regime over the last two years.

Hanson sees the Obama administration’s foreign policy as a disastrous replay of the Carter doctrine, once again illustrating Glenn Reynolds’ frequent observation that a replay of Jimmy Carter is simply the “best-case scenario” for Obama.

While I believe Hanson is right in his characterization of the big picture and the likely consequences of Obama foreign policy, I’d differ from him in seeing Obama as being as feckless and weak as Carter.  I’d maintain that Carter’s foreign policy was guided by a number of naive precepts about the nature of the world.  At least during the years of his presidency, I’d contend that Carter “meant well” in the way the phrase is commonly used to describe a hopelessly incompetent bumbler who seems incapable of recognizing his own shortcomings.  Likewise, early in the Obama administration, Tammy Bruce started referring to Obama as Urkel, the nerdy, awkward, inept kid from the TV show “Family Matters” who had an uncanny ability to mess up almost everything he touched.  That certainly is one narrative for what Obama is doing in the world of foreign policy, but I’m not sure it is the right one.

As I contemplate Obama foreign policy, though, particularly in the Middle East, I find myself thinking more and more that although incompetence might be the simplest explanation, it might not be the best or the right one.  I see no good intentions in the administration’s domestic policy, so why should its foreign policy be exempt from charges that it is motivated more by malevolence to the United States and its role in history than by a supposed set of “liberal” ideals?

This is an administration that seems bent on alienating all of our historical allies as quickly as possible, while taking it easy on our geopolitical foes.  Obama seems to want our allies to view us as unreliable and untrustworthy while making sure our enemies view us as weak, indecisive, and either unable or unwilling to use force to protect our interests or to enforce our stated policy goals.  If there is a better explanation of the administration’s ultimate foreign policy goals, I’d sure like to know what it might be.

Those of us who listen to NPR largely to monitor the bias in the publicly-funded network’s news programming were treated to a whole series of stories about Hugo Chavez and Venezuela this week in advance of that country’s election on Sunday.   While it is easy for NPR to downplay the bias in its reporting on North Korea since few on the American left are foolish enough to openly praise Kim Jong-un, reporting on Chavez and Venezuela poses a large number of challenges for the network, as it tries to appear “balanced” while still advancing its agenda.

When I woke up on Wednesday morning, for instance, I heard part of this interview and couldn’t believe what I was listening to, as NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed Rory Carroll, a correspondent for The Guardian who has written a book about Chavez.  The interview began with Carroll making an observation about Chavez’s strong support among poor Venezuelans:

I would say about a third of Venezuelans adored him right through everything. From the beginning, right until the end. And, it’s impressive. I mean, for a guy who’s in power for 14 years? And you would tramp up the barrios — these hillside slums were his bedrock of support — and these people felt that down below in the palace, in Miraflores, there was a guy who was on their side — that he was their champion. He looked like them, he spoke like them. He was them. And that was an incredibly powerful connection that Chavez was able to maintain all through his 14 years in power.

In a subsequent exchange, Carroll related the story of a “clash” he once had with Chavez on television where Chavez responded to the question in part by deploying the rhetoric of race and class which is so popular on the left.  Summing up the encounter, Carroll made it clear he thought Chavez had made a valuable point: “I was a perfect fall guy or rhetorical punch bag, in the sense that, yes, I’m Irish, freckly and blond, or ginger, if you like — I was in that sense a perfect foil as a stand-in agent of imperialism.”

As the interview continued, though, Carroll acknowledged that the longer Chavez remained in power, the less enthusiastic he and the staff at The Guardian felt about Chavez’s reign.  Carroll talked about economic stagnation in Venezuela, the rising crime rate, and the fact that the failure of many of Chavez’s policies disproportionately affected the poor.  Carroll answered a question about his declining enthusiasm for Chavez as follows:

Well, it’s a good question. Yes, at the beginning — and I think most liberals and right-thinking people would have been, in his first couple of years in power. There was plenty of reason to give him any benefit of the doubt. Now, over time, when he became a bit more oppressive, shutting down television stations, and when the wheels were kind of beginning to come off the economy in some ways, I, in my own reporting, became very critical, just reflecting what I saw on the ground. And this prompted quite a debate, internal debate, in my newspaper, because a lot of editors then and to this day feel and felt that we should have supported Hugo Chavez because he was a standard-bearer for the left. Whereas I, very close up, I thought, well, no, actually. Because sadly, he’s running the country into the ground and we have to report that.

In other words, even a reporter for The Guardian feels compelled to actually practice journalism once in a while.  And it was at this point when this interview–and other stories like it during the week–started to get very challenging for NPR and its listeners.

My reaction to the interview–and other stories like it during the week–was rather like Tim Graham’s take at Newsbusters: “Thatcher, Schmatcher. NPR is still obsessing over its loss of leftist Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.”  But when I actually looked up the interview on the NPR website, I saw something else completely.  Even when normally far-left NPR decides to air a mostly positive story about Chavez, it is still not positive enough for its left-wing listeners.

Many listeners were voicing their anger at NPR for daring to mention any of the negative realities of life under Chavez.  One listener wrote:

The tone of this article is most disappointing. Where do I start and is it worth it, given that NPR has become a mouthpiece for North American pursuit of control over everyone, starting from its docile citizens? Or are they simply immoral and prefer to ignore military intervention so they can continue to shop and charge everything on (more…)

Does Rich Lowry get it?

Chávez got his first political break in a failed military coup and never lost his taste for militarizing politics. Fidel Castro was his mentor, and he propped up the Castro regime with Venezuela’s ample oil. He funded guerrillas warring against the democratically elected government of Colombia. He praised every heinous dictator around the planet as a brother-in-arms. He was hell on the plutocrats, and also on the Jews. “Don’t let yourselves be poisoned by those wandering Jews,” he warned his countrymen, in a sentiment worthy of the 15th century.

All of this should make Chávez an unsympathetic figure for everyone in America. Not so, sadly. For some, all is forgiven if you hate the rich with a white-hot passion and talk the language of populist redistribution, while wrapping your program in a bow of rancid, paranoid anti-Americanism. Then, every allowance will be made for your thuggery. Everyone will obsess about your colorful and charming personality. And praise you when you’re gone.

Emphasis added.  Via Powerline Picks.

I saw this item at Reason.com the other day.  It’s a short piece reflecting on a video of a speech by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talking about how one’s “sensitivity to disgust” is supposedly some sort of predictor of one’s political views.  I haven’t watched the whole video yet, but the speech was given at the Museum of Sex in New York City, so some amount of its content seems designed to appeal to the audience that would be attending a speech in that location.

Jim Epstein at Reason.com summarizes the key points of the speech as follows:

“Morality isn’t just about stealing and killing and honesty, it’s often about menstruation, and food, and who you are having sex with, and how you handle corpses,” says NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who is author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics.

Haidt argues that our concern over these victimless behaviors is rooted in our biology. Humans evolved to feel disgusted by anything that when consumed makes us sick. That sense of disgust then expanded “to become a guardian of the social order.”

This impulse is at the core of the culture war. Those who have a low sensitivity to disgust tend to be liberals or libertarians; those who are easily disgusted tend to be conservative.

The full video of the speech is available at the above link.

My reaction to all this is that it 1). depends on how one defines conservative, and 2). it depends on what kinds of things one labels or considers to be examples of disgust.

With respect to point 1)., I think that a large portion of the conservative coalition is rather heavily libertarian-leaning, and it just makes more sense for us to identify as conservative and vote for Republicans because  the Libertarian party seems doomed to remain a fringe party, at least as long as that party’s leadership continues to endorse an isolationist or head-in-the-sand approach to foreign policy.  Now while it may be the case that many traditional “social conservatives” have a “high sensitivity to disgust” with respect to issues of sex, I’m not even convinced that that is as widely the case as Haidt’s remarks suggest.  I’ve heard socially-conservative Christian ministers talk about sex in ways that show they may have a better understanding of the variety of human sexual experience than many academics who claim to be experts on the subject.

On the other hand, with respect to point 2)., I can find many, many examples of “disgust” fueling the attitudes of liberals and leftists.  One could begin by looking at their intense hatred of Sarah Palin and anyone like her.  Some of that hatred, I would argue, was fueled by a disgust at the lives of anyone who doesn’t live the life of a modern liberal in a major coastal city.

Most modern liberals are disgusted by hunting, by the people who shop at Wal-Mart, by the petroleum industry, by the food industry, by the military, by evangelical Christians, and by the reality of life in small-town, rural America.  James Taranto and British Philosopher Roger Scruton call it “oikophobia”: it is a worldview which accepts or excuses the transgressions of select special-interest groups or of non-western cultures, while it judges the familiar by a harsh standard and condemns them with expressions of disgust at the nature of their lives.