Running out of bad words

Sage words from the U.K. Loony Left:

[Mayor of London] Livingstone says Bush is 'greatest threat to life on planet'

ONE IN THREE BRITONS THINK BUSH IS STUPID - POLL

In other news, one in five Britons said Bush had "cooties," while one in eight called him "Mr. Poo-Poo Head."

The Left, on both sides of the Atlantic, has chosen screaming hyperbole as its normative mode of expression. Practically every leftist movement -- feminism, environmentalism, trade unionism, and the rest -- is shot through with Marxist historicism, the belief that History-with-a-capital-H is moving inevitably in the direction they intuited. In the last two decades, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has been harder to argue that state socialism is the wave of the future. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has been rather more difficult to say we live in a world "beyond good and evil."

If you've been caught up in the fantasies of the Left for your whole life, as Red Ken Livingstone has, it must be a difficult existence. A rational mind would adjust his theories to fit reality, but the committed leftist drinks deeply from the wellspring of irrational faith: that lo stato can solve every problem without resorting to force, and that human ingenuity can father a perfect world without God's assistance. The first and foremost reason the Hard Left hates Bush is because he's a committed Christian who believes in God's providence. They thought his type was on the way out, what with modern science and all; it enrages them to think that not only do committed Christians still exist, but they seem to be making a comeback.

The same wounded roars come from Catholic liberals, too, as they watch their "Spirit of Vatican II" novelties dissipate like a puff of smoke in a strong breeze. Younger Catholics, and especially younger priests, aren't "progressing" in the way they had hoped. A faithful man who sees things going amiss can say o tempora! o mores!, but ultimately lay the matters in God's hands. The secular man cannot abide any setbacks, as the real, ultimate battleground is in the here-and-now; thus the impatience and rage when things don't go his way.