How great would it be to have Rather read that on national television during prime time? The GOP would win a real landslide next time.

I’d like to thank Mr. Auster for drawing my attention to the Smiley piece. A marvelous example of liberal tolerance and humanity in action.

The Jane Smiley piece demonstrates the natural reaction of a liberal-modern faced with the genuine possibility that her world view may not prevail: the demonization of the opposition as a less-than-human oppressor-untermensch, at the same time more powerful and yet far inferior to the oppressed-ubermensch, the free and equal new superman whose shackles would come unbound if only the untermensch could be eliminated.

Jane Smiley is the Sheryl Crow of letters. Like Miss Crow, she “grew up in Missouri” but “lives in California”, having rejected everything that produced her, and being quite snotty about it. California needs her own immigration policy, along the lines of her longstanding agricultural policy, to keep the poison fruit of other states at bay.

I quote the prescient David Lebedoff from his new book:

“If an individual has strong roots in a social class or religion, in the values of an urban neighborhood or the farmland or country club life, then the fact that one’s intelligence has once been measured as above the average may not be a critical point in self-identity or allegiance. But if such roots are absent, or **if they have been rejected**, one may assume a self-identity as an individual of measured superiority and find a class allegiance with other individuals of similar measurement.” [emphasis added]