“He that lives upon hope will die fasting.” Ben Franklin

Part One argued that history teaches us to beware the arrogance and sentimentalism that give rise to the dangerous hope underlying Liberalism’s “anti-war,” anti-military fervor, a hope certain to cause a culture to die at the hands of its enemies.

However, history also teaches that great cultures almost inevitably fall from within. For example, what honest person doesn’t regard “late Rome” as a harsh pejorative that says little about the quality of Rome’s enemies but everything about the rotten state of late Roman culture.

Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge that the ideas of Liberals who urge us to replace strength and vigilance with hope, who urge us to condemn as war-mongering demagoguery Churchill’s defintion of an appeaser as “one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last,” are part of a greater ethos whose corrosive notions eat away at all the values that nurture a free, safe, and prosperous culture.

However, before moving on to some additional examples of the perverse Liberal Hope Diet, we should remind ourselves that while its perfect nonsense is most often peddled by Liberals, it isn’t always.

For proof, consider Idaho’s Republican Senator William Edgar Borah, who upon Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 reacted with this: “Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.”

No, that statement doesn’t reflect the thinking of a Conservative, isolationist or not, just as it doesn’t reflect the thinking of an honest Moderate, Libertarian, or Independent. But  it does perfectly reflect the astounding arrogance and shocking sentimentalism that underlie virtually every Liberal utterance.

With the above truth in mind, let’s examine other poisonous effects of the Liberal Hope Diet.

Democracy and Liberty — When you get right down to it, drooling Liberals at home and decrepit Leftists abroad have for at least a century been peddling the deadly snake oil that by turning over their power to the level of government most remote from them, the People make themselves infinitely more free.

Moreover, Liberals preach, if the People can manage to turn over all their power to five (or as many as nine) Liberal Activist Justices of the Supreme Court, they will have bought themselves an express ticket to Democracy and Liberty Heaven, where every perfectly obedient everybody lives entirely (and agonizingly) upon hope.

Incredibly, with respect to whether or not America will remain a nation with a government of, by, and for the people or one of, by, and for a Liberal judicial oligarchy, some Conservatives have also become infected with mad hope as evidenced by their declarations that it just might turn out to be a good thing for Conservatism if Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) sets up shop in the oval Office for a term or two.

Trouble is, those Conservatives never explain how they hope to overturn the decisions handed down between ’08 and ’16 by a majority Liberal Activist Supreme Court. Neither do they let us in on their hopeful plan for ridding the Court of a Liberal Activist majority certain to serve far beyond 2016.

Prosperity — Despite the truth that you couldn’t find an entrenched, arrogant, wasteful, imperious Federal groundhog with the help of ten thousand terriers, much less dig it out of its hole, Barack Obama is pushing the dogma of the Liberal Church that tells the people the more of their money they send to politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, the more prosperous they become.

Of course, the truth is that wherever people have lived upon the hope that their centralized government would “give” them prosperity, they have died fasting. Apparently, however, that solemn reality hasn’t deterred a great number of Americans from hoping “Yes, I Can” Barack will get centralization right this time around. 

Energy — Regarding the nation’s “energy crisis,” it is a fact that to secure our future, we must work hard and creatively to develop new sources of energy that we control, all the while using energy efficiently to conserve supplies, reduce the financial burden upon families, and  keep American business competitive at home and abroad.

Of course, as we pursue the goal of creating an America in which energy is plentiful, affordable, and reasonably green, we must do everything we can to keep energy costs from devastating our economy and thus the lives of the American people.

The Liberal Hope Diet, however, takes an entirely different line on the problem as it asks us to sit around hoping to hell that by refusing to drill for oil and gas at home in the short term, the nation will not only become energy independent but will also save billions in energy costs.

The truth is, however, something else; for the hope fueled Liberal energy plan guarantees only that those who live upon hope will lie in their recyclable home (a cardboard box that formerly housed a refrigerator) and die fasting, freezing and jobless.

An exaggeration? Then, think carefully about the hope that motivated vote grubbing Democrats and Republicans who (1) continued the tariff on cheap fuel from Brazil (Brazilians beat sugar cane into the stuff that powers their cars) and (2) encoded into law a new energy gospel that preaches, “Americans shall beat their corn into ethanol.”

Yes, with visions of secure political power dancing in their heads, those “experienced” leaders closed their eyes and plucked from their twirling brains the entirely hope driven mandate that requires the production of 15 billion gallons of ethanol from corn by 2022.

Of course, they scrupulously avoided any mention of the proviso that requires the American people to hope like hell every daydreaming day and every nightmarish night  that the mandate won’t send food prices soaring so much that a dinner of hamburgers rustled up at home for a family of four will cost $100 long before we see the dawn of the century’s third decade.

Here, this commentary about the astonishing audacity of foolish hope ends but not before encouraging Conservatives to keep up the good fight against the dangerous Liberal Hope Diet in all its manifestations — no matter who the peddler.

That fight, by the way, is not just morally and socially admirable. It will be  pragmatically beneficial when Conservatives find themselves exempted from red-faced shame if ever (God forbid) Ben Franklin is forced to tell the American population, “I told you so.”

Copyright by A.J. DiCintio