Frustrated and unhappy at losing yet another election, and angry about losing power in general, Liberals are now trying to convince America that President Bush should not hold an inauguration celebration while the country is at war and South Asia is recovering from a tsunami. The funny thing about Liberals is, they always manage to sink just a little bit lower than anyone expects. They're back to pretending to care about the troops, as some Liberals are suggesting that Bush appropriate the $40 million that private donors have given to fund the various inaugural activities and spend it on military equipment. This marks one of the few times in history that Liberals have advocated an increase in military spending, which makes it an indication of how much they really hate President Bush. Others believe Bush should take the money and spend it on tsunami relief efforts, which are already being heavily funded by the same private donors who contributed to the inaugural events. (Most Hollywood Liberals, for instance, instead of giving their own money to tsunami relief as Sandra Bullock has done, are simply putting on a show to convince you to give more of your money.) I don't remember them -- or anyone -- arguing that Bill Clinton should cancel his 1996 inauguration because of the violent conflict in the Balkans or the terrible genocide in Rwanda, in which 800,000 were murdered while the UN and the US did nothing. The Liberal arguments against holding an inauguration have nothing to do with war and disaster, however. It's just a symptom of a larger illness. President Bush is not under attack because he's having an inauguration during a war. He's being attacked solely because Liberals hate the man personally, along with everything he stands for. For crying out loud, even the anarchists are organising against him -- now THAT'S a serious animosity!

Democrats have a choice to make. How much longer will they continue to allow these frustrated, angry children to speak on their behalf? Where are the Democrats who love this country, celebrate its achievements, honor its traditions, support its troops and realise that the best defense is a strong offense? Where are the Democrats to whom "morality" is not a dirty word? Where are those who believe that our laws must be made by elected officials and comply with the Constitution, not subject to change at will by activist judges relying on foreign laws or public opinion? Don't think that it hasn't already happened -- in Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Kennedy cited a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the decision to overturn a Texas sodomy case. In Atkins v. Virginia, which struck down laws regarding death sentences for the mentally retarded, Justice Stevens claimed his decision was based on "a national consensus" which he felt had developed. That's the sort of thing that has been causing the Democrats to lose power, and rightly so.

Democrats as led by Liberals are dissolving into a party of the shrill minority, an obstructionist party with shrinking power to obstruct. Real Democrats like Senators Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller are shoved aside by the radicals, to the point where Zell Miller spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention instead of addressing the Democrats, as he did in 1992. If the true Democrats don't take back their party now, the 2006 election may see the Republicans with a bulletproof majority in the Senate. It only takes 60 votes in the Senate to defeat any filibuster, and the Republicans currently have 55 seats. 17 Democratic Senators are up for re-election in 2006 (as well as 15 Republicans and 1 Independent). Five of those Democratic Senate seats are from states that voted for Bush in the 2004 election -- Florida (Bill Nelson), Nebraska (Ben Nelson), New Mexico (Jeff Bingaman), North Dakota (Kent Conrad) and West Virginia (Bobby "Sheets" Byrd). It doesn't require a great stretch of the imagination to see how easily the Democrats could be marginalised for decades to come. The ability to block any Senate bill from coming to a vote is their last real power, and unless the Liberals running the party into the ground are stopped, it's likely they will lose even that. Of course, given the way they've abused the privilege, using the filibuster to block judicial nominations from coming to a vote instead of blocking bills, perhaps that wouldn't be a bad thing.

When most Americans think about Democrats, they think of gay "marriage," high taxes, peace at any cost, antipathy to religion, government control and nanny-state politics including welfare expansion and socialised medicine. The Democrats are seen as anti-gun, anti-industry, anti-military, anti-free trade, anti-capitalism, and anti-American sovereignty. Democrats are viewed as the party undermining public support for the war on terror, a war that most Americans understand we must fight and win. There's a reason for this, and it's not some vast right-wing conspiracy. Those are the policies of the Liberals who speak for the Democrats in every public forum. If you're a Democrat, and those policies don't sound like your views, then you'd better take your party back from the Liberals before it's too late. That doesn't mean allowing your leaders to pander to the center, pretending to be more conservative than they really are, as John Kerry did (though too late for the 2004 election) and Hillary Clinton will spend the next four years doing. You need to stand behind leaders who really DO represent your views.

It would be a shame to see America become a one-party political system, but that would still be better than allowing Liberals to take charge. As the last decade's worth of election results show, a majority of Americans agree with that.

UPDATE: A somewhat sad and predictable response from Daily Kos: "CavalierX we don't need you advice.  Liberals are the Democratic party." You're right, of course. Keep doing exactly what you have been. It's been working just fine. You just need to get your message out. Incidentally, doesn't "Liberals are the Democratic party" sound too close to MoveOn.org's statement, "Now it's our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back" for comfort?