This is sickening, but typical. Kevin Aylward of Wizbang goes to a lot of trouble to set up a competition that is intended to recognize as many blogs as possible and introduce people to blogs they don't already know. It's done in a spirit of fun, and relies on a modicum of good faith among the participants. But liberals don't seem to be able to do anything honestly, to follow the most minimal standards of sportsmanship, or to do anything in a spirit of good will and good humor. Since Kevin hasn't designed the competition using national security-level safeguards against cheating, the liberals think it's OK to ruin the contest for everyone else by writing code that racks up thousands of fictitious votes for "their" blogs. Not only do they see nothing wrong with this, they brag about it openly.And then he closes with:
I got to know Kevin during the Republican convention. He's a good guy and I know that he takes a lot of pride in the Weblog awards, and invests a lot of work in setting them up. Now he's been put in an impossible situation where he must either disqualify the liberal blogs en masse for cheating, or let them ruin the contest. Is this a big deal? No, but that's sort of the point. The liberals' instinct to cheat is so strong that they can't even participate in a fun little contest without trying to spoil it for everyone else. That's sad, but, as I said, it's also typical.
The impulse to cheat and destroy is natural -- we can of course observe it, for example, in the larger political picture to which Rocket Man alludes -- but it is ugly. In the rank ordering of human nature, it is low.This continuing lunatic drivel about how corrupt the Right is can only be understood as projection of the basest kind. This just disgusts me to no end.
The existence or occurrence of wrongdoing does not prove that nature observes no moral distinctions. Rather, the distinction among the types of men and behavior is the impetus for our desire to learn the right, and to practice it. We must avail ourselves of education to learn that there is such a thing as good for man by nature, to learn what it is, to practice it, and to overcome the temptation to do wrong.
Otherwise we run the risk of ending up, morally speaking, shrivelled runts of men like the readers of Markos Moulitsas. (With apologies to Paul Simon for borrowing the heading above.)
I've been re-reading Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" -- what a classic book for improving your life both at work and at home as well as a surprising history lesson due to its original publication date (the current edition has been updated somewhat but retains much of the original flavor).
I have become convinced that no leftist has EVER read it. They would simply not behave so badly if they had -- it's that powerful of a book. The paperback edition is relatively cheap -- give one to every leftist loon you know for Christmas.
Another option I recommend strongly in this vein is Czeslaw Milosz' "The Captive Mind". While not a personal development book per se, it's one of the few winners of the Nobel Prize for literature that's really worth it's stuff as a damning and insightful indictment of the totalitarian mind. It's one of the few books with a rep for moderating leftists if not outright conversions.
And for the recalcitrant ones, give them BOTH. Even if their minds are unsalvageable due to years of Chomskyite puerility, you can rest with the knowledge that you gave it your best try.
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