Permit me, in catching up after a short absence (due to business elsewhere), a brief rant.

Liberal Democrats like to refer to themselves as "progressive" now-days. Progressive. Forward moving. A rather obvious implication is that the opponents of "progressives" are--what?--regressive, I suppose. Hmmmm. Submitted for your perusal:

1. This past weekend, Nancy Pelosi gave a townhall meeting. When asked if Democrats could come up with a candidate who could beat a Republican nominee, she said yes, and that this Democrat contender would be comparable to F.D.R.

2. We all know that Democrats like to talk about the Iraq theater of the war on terror as if it were a repeat of Vietnam. As if. I grew up surrounded by men who were actually in Vietnam...fighting, not reporting. I have eyewitness testimony of the events in Vietnam. Iraq is not Vietnam--not yet. (But it will be if the Alien Media Nation have their way and this war gets run by the Legislature and not the Executive! But I digress.) One has to wonder: As long as they want to go back to F.D.R. why don't they frame discussions of the war on terror as if it were World War Two?

F.D.R. and Vietnam. It seems that, for Democrats, moving forward means going backward. Now we know why they think conservatives are wrong on the issues: they think that we are the ones going in the wrong direction. But what can you say to people who insist that moving ahead requires living in the past?

Nor ought we to entertain the notion that their position on health care provides any evidence that--on at least that issue--they are moving ahead. They tell us that we are one of--if not the only--advanced nation on the planet without nationalized health care. Look at Great Britain, they say. Look at Canada. Great Britain and Canada, among others, have had nationalized health care for some time, right? That means, again, that Democrats are looking to the past saying, in effect, not only, "Let's move in reverse" but also "Let's go back and join others who are failing in their own attempts to solve the problems we are working on."

These are the same type of people who tell us, among other things, that we no longer live in 1789 and therefore need a "living, breathing" constitution. It's fine to go back to the 1960s and 1940s (include the 1970s, if you want to talk about impeachment), but not the 1700s. It is difficult, at times, to be charitable in thinking and writing about them and their fear-rooted policies. Darn them to heck.

(I've finished studying the recent Intelligent Design decision. And under the heading of "better-late-than-never" I will have some things to post about it. It's not as if this is going to go away any time soon.)