Ideas are for chumps

From Jonah Goldberg: “What’s Liberals’ big idea? Who cares.”

But Bush-hatred is just one side of the coin. The other is this bizarre, almost pathetic yearning for Democratic self-esteem. It was amazing how much of the rhetoric from the recent Daily Kos convention in Las Vegas was about standing up, fighting back and feeling proud to be Democrats. This liberal-pride crowd likes "fighting Dems," and open expression of Bush-hatred is the litmus test for whether you're a fighting Dem. You can be a moderate, like Virginia Senate hopeful Jim Webb or former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, or a flaming liberal, like Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, and that's fine as long as you'll "stand up and fight" and refuse to take this (expletive deleted) from that (expletive deleted) anymore. In fact, you can believe anything you want. You don't actually have to have big ideas. The important part is that you care.

That sounds a lot like this quote from P.J. O’Rourke:

The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things— war and hunger and date rape— liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

Indeed.