Camille Paglia Fires Salvos in All Directions

Camille Paglia is reportedly the favorite columnist of Matt Drudge, a libertarian/conservative hybrid, who usually favors more Republican themes and memes.
Here's a delightful little riposte to a rib-tickler letter suggesting that Osama and Soros are barely indistinguishable as enemies of America [I love the way Camille does NOT DODGE all sorts of polemical IEDs, but confronts them with idiosyncratic glee]:

The senators of my party, with a few stellar exceptions like Dianne Feinstein, may be a pack of vain, spineless, poll-puking, strutting peacocks, but they are not mass murderers. They did not coolly plan an amoral strike on American landmarks and cause the unspeakable suffering, death and incineration of nearly 3,000 people, U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals.

As for the Democratic Party's governing committee or the combative, impudent left-liberal activist groups, they are just as committed to their altruistic vision of a future America as are conservatives, who base their values on tradition and faith. Both sides deserve respect.

However, I must confess my own exasperation with the Democratic leadership, who spout tiresome platitudes but achieve little and who stampede off on puerile publicity stunts that alienate potential voters across party lines. The latest example is the near-delusional campaign to turn popular radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has unwaveringly supported the military for nearly 20 years, into an anti-military antichrist. If Democrats are serious about ideology-based government regulation of talk radio, then the party is fast abandoning its fundamental principles, central to which should be constitutionally protected free speech.

To return to your war zone hypothetical, I doubt that the sociopaths of al-Qaida would be moved to mercy by your extermination of (probably pacifist and fumblingly unarmed) fellow Americans. Wouldn't you be next in the terrorists' line of fire?

This kind of partisan rancor and mutual recrimination are the sad legacy of two self-destructive administrations in a row. Bill Clinton's lies about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky paralyzed the government and tainted his legacy, while George Bush's poor judgment and managerial ineptitude have mired us in an endless, brutal war with little chance for a happy ending.

I find it hard to believe that my fellow Democrats want to backtrack and relive every tedious scandal from the Clinton era. But that's what we'll get if Hillary is the nominee -- a long, sulfurous night of the walking dead, with chattering skeletons tumbling out of every closet. I've been discouraged by the clumsy missteps of the Edwards campaign, but I'm still hopeful about Barack Obama, who had the guts and good sense to publicly oppose the Iraq war from the start and whose ascent promises a clean, invigorating break from the sordid past.

I think she's naive about Obama, and finally off her puerile infatuation with the charlatan ambulance-chaser.

I actually like Hillary's 401K investments from SSec prospective recipients. And as Mr. DeMuth notes in today's WSJ: "(I predict that if Sen. Clinton is elected president, the corporate income tax will be further reduced during her tenure)." And I have a soft spot for Bill Richardson, though he is now resembling a bobble-head panderer as he lurches down the campaign trail toward potential V.P. status.

But I prefer a more dependable conservative than the busybody Hillary, whose hubby has many social nostrums in his pharmacopia of snake-oil cures. Yes, he may help her balance the budget, lower welfare even more, and reduce some taxes. But Billy Jeff's voracious appetite for public acclaim may keep his wife in the shadows, and our foreign policy in a Carterite symbolic gesture mode.