The principal feature of contemporary American liberalsim is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing 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. People who care a lot are naturally superior to we who don't care any more than we have to. By virtue of this superiority the caring have a moral right to lead the nation. 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. Kidnapping the moral high ground also serves to inflate liberal ranks. People who are, in fact, just kindhearted are told that because they care, they must be liberals, too.

Chomsky or Kristol?

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

He has written ten books that I know of.

I had two guesses straight off...and both wrong. A literary figure, rather than a political commentator, perhaps? (says he, cheating again...)

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

The individual's last name starts with O', but I won't finish, cause I dont want to give it away.

Teddy O'Kennedy? Maybe one of his brothers?

Right ethnicity...wrong ideology.