A Gallup poll shows that while 74% of Republicans are “extremely proud” to be Americans, only 32% of Democrats and 23% of self-described liberals feel the same.

Why does the left hate America?

Let’s stipulate that America is not perfect. I don’t need to list the imperfections, because the left and their news puppets remind us of them daily.

But notwithstanding her many flaws, America stands tall against other countries. Here are some metrics:

One is racism. That’s an abomination for which the left delightfully condemns America, even as they demand that we discriminate on the basis of race.

But in fact, America is now one of the least racist countries in the world, far behind Egypt (ranked No. 1), Russia (No. 4), Japan (No. 9), India and an imaginary country that the survey called “Palestine” (which apparently will be a very racist country if it ever becomes one).

In wealth, America is in the top few if you leave out the fortuitous wealth of small oil countries like Qatar and Kuwait. Wealth does not make a country good, but poverty can certainly make it bad.

In economic freedom, America ranks fourth out of 162 countries. Socialist paradise Venezuela ranks dead last. Huh, go figure.

Americans have won the most Nobel Prizes. In fact, we’ve won nearly triple the number of the second-highest country, and about the same number as countries second through sixth combined.

In Nobel Prizes, we’re a dynasty.

It’s not just in science. Americans have won the most Nobels in five of the six categories: chemistry, economics, physics, medicine and, notably, peace. (The sixth category is literature, where the French lead.)

Note that these American winners are chosen by committees of Swedes and Norwegians, not Americans.

Finally, most would say that America is blessed with visual beauty. Even Woody Guthrie — not exactly a MAGA hat wearer — sang of beauty from the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters in a land “made for you and me.”

But the left still hates that land.

I think their hatred is not despite the fact that there is so much to love about America, but because of it. The American dream gets in the way of the left’s plot to swap it for an atheistic and socialistic nightmare — ruled by them, of course.

In other words, the left hates America because it stands in the way of their power. They’d rather rule over hell than live in heaven.

There’s another, less obvious reason that the left hates America. The clue to this second reason is the left’s obsessive compulsion to display their virtue and morality.

This behavior has become so prevalent that it’s been named. It’s “virtue signaling” or, as I call it, “moral preening.”

Moral preening is a coping mechanism for an inferiority complex. The hateful, hapless and humorless soothe their feelings of inferiority with conspicuous displays of superiority.

For example, for many years the left has talked pretty about their compassion toward the downtrodden. But the truly compassionate people are conservatives, who at all income levels quietly make more charitable donations than noisy liberals.

Here’s another example. Have you noticed that electric vehicles look funny? That’s because they’re designed to. They’re an eye-catching stage from which to shout, “I’m a wonderful person.”

Here’s another. The left here in Aspen now makes a show of their “grief therapy” for the angst they feel or pretend to feel about global warming. This melodrama must be performed in groups, of course, to maximize the preening opportunities.

Afterward, oblivious to the irony, they amuse themselves in being transported uphill by motorized lifts powered by electricity generated from burning coal or natural gas (just like the motors in those look-at-me electric vehicles) so that they can slide back down. Over and over.

One more example of the left’s moral preening. After mostly losing their war on Christmas, they now lecture us on the evils of that prototypical American holiday, Thanksgiving.

In short, the American left’s goal is not to actually do good, but to feel good — to assuage their feelings of inferiority. They accomplish that by dragging down the rest of America.

Of course, America itself has nothing to do with this illness. These leftists also would hate France, Canada, Japan or New Zealand if they moved there (as they often threaten to, but never do).

Heck, if they and their children were starving in the socialist utopia of Venezuela, they’d hate even that. Wherever a leftist finds himself, that is where he hates. Because it feels good.

This is why the left is wildly triggered by President Trump. It’s not his policies, which are often less conservative than George Bush’s. It’s because Trump calls them out for their boring, hypocritical, self-indulgent, counterproductive feel-goodery.

So when leftists make a show of hating on America, don’t persuade them with facts and logic. It will only make them hate America — and you — all the more.

These people are beyond persuasion. They need treatment. And I don’t mean global warming grief therapy.

(Published Dec. 1, 2019 in the Aspen Times at https://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/glenn-k-beaton-two-reasons-why-the-left-hates-america/ )

The Democrat field for president may see its second billionaire, Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City mayor laments that the current field of Dems are “not the way to run a railroad.”

Indeed. The guy in charge of baggage on this railroad is named Joe, and he has a lot of it. He’s been toting his baggage in and around the political tracks for most of his long life.

He’s never become the train engineer because he still hasn’t learned to stay awake at the switch. He’s a serial plagiarizer and thinks FDR went on TV in 1929 to talk about the stock market crash even though TV hadn’t been invented yet and Roosevelt didn’t become president until 1933.

He told a false war story extolling his courage and permits his smarmy son to sell political influence around the world for millions.

Up near the front of this Dem choo-choo is Continue reading →

Imagine no possessions.”

— John Lennon, 1971

Five years after those words were sung, a couple of college dropouts named Steve hooked up and started making computers. They called their little company Apple Computer.

Computers don’t build themselves. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had to buy the parts and pay designers and manufacturers. After exhausting their paltry money, they persuaded an investor to kick in a few hundred thousand dollars for part of their new company.

The company grew and they needed more money. Several other individuals and then venture capital firms invested millions in return for sizable chunks of the company.

The company continued to grow. In 1980, Continue reading →

The Democrats’ punch-drunk base has demanded that President Donald Trump be impeached ever since the 2016 election when they suffered a knock-out in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and then went down again in the recounts.

Then they couldn’t turn the Electoral College rogue, and failed with something called the Emoluments Clause, and botched their smears of Trump’s judges and couldn’t convince anyone that the new first lady is last and the last first lady is first.

Of course, they attempted all that not for the purpose of succeeding, but for the purpose of making them feel virtuous. That’s what they do.

Former President Barack Obama brilliantly capitalized on this mindset. Instead of arguing that proposals with which he disagreed would not work, he simply condemned them as unvirtuous. He declared at least 46 times, “That’s not who we are.”

Saying, “That’s not who we are” is who Obama is. It worked with his Dems, because their discourse isn’t about problem solving; it’s a revival meeting.

Not all the Dems have been drinking the virtue Kool-Aid, however. Continue reading →

Their first migration was great not for its goodness but for its enormity. It was of course the capture, enslavement and diaspora of black Africans. They were stacked like cargo aboard slave ships bound for America and elsewhere and then auctioned and owned like cattle.

Slavery was common throughout the world and had been for thousands of years, but American slavery was notable for its sheer scale. By the mid-1800s, between 30% and nearly 60% of the population of southern states were slaves.

In abolishing slavery, colonials should have led the world, not lagged it. They were destined to found a nation, said Abraham Lincoln years later, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Slavery was beneath them.

And many of them knew it. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson — a slave owner but a brilliant visionary — foreshadowed the years of reckoning ahead.

The product of that reckoning was the next great black migration, when they left the southern plantations after the Civil War. It took 80-some years, but Lincoln started to make good on Jefferson’s promise.

It was costly. Continue reading →

Denver’s goose is cooked, and now the needy need more.

According to Denver officials, “Geese poop in our parks is one of the biggest complaints we have. It had gotten to the point where the parks were being almost unenjoyable for a lot of people — that is why we moved forward with this plan.”

OK so far, but I’m curious. Why just “almost”? And “a lot of people” suggests a number less than “all.” Are there some people who don’t find goose poop unenjoyable?\

I have a friend who thinks goose poop is unenjoyable even on the golf course. Because when he accidentally drops his cigar and goes to pick it up, he sometimes mistakes a goose poop for it, and the goose poop — though no worse for his health and no worse smelling and tasting than a cigar — is really hard to keep lit. Sort of like smoked salmon, but more so.

On to Denver’s plan. Continue reading →

Remember those predictions that polar bears and snow would soon be extinct?

Well, here in Aspen and throughout the Colorado mountains, snowpack this spring is nearly 500% of normal. That’s not a typo. It’s almost five times normal.

The ski mountain at Aspen has reopened for skiing every weekend in June, including this weekend. Even the locals — a pretty discerning bunch — say we had a season beyond epic.

None of the growing polar bear population has been sighted in Aspen, yet, but the black bears often seen in town must be getting nervous.

Does this mean that global warming, or whatever is the nom du jour, is a hoax? Continue reading →