I wouldn’t know. Did you learn about such things from your own gay boyfriend, Alex?

Hey – I wouldn’t hold it against you. If you make your gay boyfriend happy or if he makes you happy, that’s fine with me.

Once you get on the A list of chic victim groups – you are NEVER held responsible for anything you yourself do. In the most repulsive version of this – your victim is blamed for “oppressing” you, thus causing you to attack them.

That is the dynamic here. There’s a lot of moralizing – but no real moral judgment. It’s all about showing you know who’s on the A list and who’s on the B list, and dispensing pity or scorn accordingly.

When I was at the Dead Sea and my eyes got a bit salty I was led out (or carried, depending on which version I happen to recall) by three French girls I was travelling with to the showers. One looked like a very young Elizabeth Hurley. It was kind of fun.

In rooting for the underdog, comparative liberalisms between two or more parties doesn’t matter. The lack of power matters. But in a way, they have a point. (And perhaps this is incidental). If Israel is already the (intrinsically?) more liberal party, why does it need defending? There is a difference between defending the rights of those perceived to be without them (a core tenet of the liberal view) and preferring to defend the rights of those who are merely more liberal (which has nothing to do with liberalism. If anything, a defense of one’s “own”, whether ethnically, culturally, ideologically or otherwise, is moreso a conservative tendency).

Sorry Sarah. I like your writing, but the case you try to advance is fucked – at least when viewed through the traditional, binary ideological construct.

That’s a great case to make for Israel, innit?

And here you sum up the duality and hypocrisy of modern, Western big “L” Liberalism. At the same time as they make excuses for our enemies and rationale for why we are evil, they attack small “c” conservatism as contrary to “liberty / tolerance / moderation / peacefulness” which is of course, a lie and a joke.

“Let us begin to hold EVERYBODY … up to the same standards.” – That IS one of the fundamental concepts of conservative and why most people outgrow liberalism after they leave college, get jobs, and become productive members of society. It’s why I made that journey.