Have you heard, liberals are ruining America.

Am I imagining things or are conservatives taking the offensive now that they are so clearly suffering from their own foolishness? Case in point, the very liberal newspaper of my own town, the Philadelphia Inquirer, printed a blatantly liberal-bashing rant from a Weekly Standard editor in the widely-read Sunday "Currents" section (on October 9th). In it, Jonathan Last suggests that American liberals will be responsible for no less than the decline of the American empire, just as British liberals caused the demise of the British empire 70 years ago. Of course it is easy to object to the premises of this argument, not to mention the conclusion. But what I find especially interesting is that Mr. Last has picked this exact moment for his credulous screed. I was still recovering from reading this nonsense when I came across Michael Barone's column in the latest issue of U.S. News and World Report (Oct. 24), wherein he argues (as he frequently does) that liberals are out of touch with real Americans, and just plain bad and wrong to boot. This time the charge is liberals' lack of patriotism and nationalism, despite the hearty embrace of these "isms" by regular (read, good) American folks. Barone is full of crap 99% of the time, but I regularly read him just to get the other view (the same reason I subject myself to the malefic David Brooks). Of course, Ann Coulter and her ilk have been accusing liberals of ruining America for a long time, and Rick Santorum recently published a whole book dedicated to this topic. But it does seem that the accusation is getting more common, more creative and more determined. It can only be a good sign -- we're really getting under their skin.