A HIGHER CALLING

Is nothing sacred to the left anymore other than a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy? Does the left's "morally superior" ideology entitle them to abandon their manners at will? Are there any adults left among them who are willing to police their misbehavior?

Were former president Jimmy Carter's and Rev. Joseph Lowery's cheap shots at President Bush at the Coretta Scott King funeral aberrations, or were they typical of the classless behavior increasingly exhibited by liberal icons?

Well, consider the merciless berating of Judge Samuel Alito by Sen. Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee to the point of driving Mrs. Alito to leave the chambers in tears.

Consider the phony allegations of corruption and bigotry driving their cavalier lecturing of this decent man, who responded, like President Bush at the King funeral, with graciousness, dignity, class and restraint. And consider that no Democrat even gently suggested to his highness, Sen. Kennedy, that he was way out of line, both in form and substance.

No, this paragon of pomposity gets a complete pass from the left for the jaw-dropping hypocrisy he displays every time he has the singular audacity to lecture anyone about anything.

He's entitled to lifetime immunity for his presumably good intentions in having promoted the failed policies of liberalism during his entire public life.

Sadly, there is recurring evidence that to liberals, one's political predilections trump everything else so that if you stand for the right things, you are virtually exempt from scrutiny. Conversely, if you stand for the wrong things, you are fair game for any type of verbal abuse, no matter the circumstances or the intended solemnity of the occasion.

If you are reputed to be a conservative, particularly one with influence who will stand in the way of the liberal agenda, a special kind of contempt is reserved for you. And, by definition, you cannot be mistreated because people who stand for the things you stand against are not worthy of respectful treatment.

As a conservative public figure, you are especially vulnerable to attacks from the left when cameras are in proximity because, whether or not the ordinary rules of decorum for events like funerals require an extra measure of politeness, no opportunity can be missed to proselytize to a mass audience.

The religious fervor of the left, in its high evangelical mode of spreading the gospel of liberalism, can be seen in its willingness to ignore the facts in furtherance of advancing its dogma.

It didn't matter that Judge Alito repeatedly provided a convincing explanation for the innocuousness of his failure to recuse himself in a case involving Vanguard, a company in which he had a relatively insignificant financial interest. It didn't matter that he convincingly testified that he was unaware of certain alleged bigoted attitudes of an organization he was supposedly affiliated with in college.

Kennedy and his colleagues were impervious to the actual facts. What mattered to them was that Alito was a conservative, and therefore, even if he was not guilty of those particular ethical infractions, he might as well have been because, to them, conservatives have a dark heart.

This is precisely the same mindset that militated against Kennedy's colleagues reprimanding him for playing fast and loose with the facts and for treating the eminently decent and respectable Judge Alito indecently and disrespectfully.

It's precisely the same mindset that led reverends Jimmy Carter and Joseph Lowery to take race-baiting, wiretapping and WMD digs at President Bush during the King funeral. Bush hatred is so pervasive that liberal eyebrows were not even raised when the "No Iraqi WMD" mantra was invoked at the event.

And, it's the same kind of mindset that prompted liberal commentator Bob Beckel to tell radio talk-show host Sean Hannity that not only were Carter's remarks not inappropriate (sorry for the triple negative), but civil-rights advocates would have been surprised and rightly disappointed if he hadn't made them. And Beckel is one of the intellectually honest liberals!

In case you harbor the fantasy that the mainstream media or liberal blogs will give Carter the brush back, think again. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz detailed how the media largely ignored Carter's jabs at Bush and quoted a number of liberal blogs expressing outrage at conservative outrage over the Carter outrage. How dare we suggest to them any limits on their licentiousness? Why, that's totalitarian censorship!

So, if you're looking for accountability from the left for the inexcusable behavior of its leaders, get a Hubble telescope. It's not that they don't have the courage to discipline their own. It's that they agree with them, applaud them and encourage them to give it to us even harder next time. They have a higher calling.

To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com. And to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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