Long John Silver's parrot...

... made more sense than many of the right-wing bloggers of late, regarding Bush's true ideology. Now that Bush is in the poll toilet and Karl Rove has been reassigned as Defender of the Royal Order of the Flush Handle, the Greek chorus of the right has been declaring that Bush is, in fact, a liberal.

Now, I truly don't read very much of the Leninite bloggers on the right, because I operate on the principle adopted by the early British author (a conservative himself), Edward Gibbon: "I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect." Besides, life is much too short to occupy it with sophistry, logical inconsistencies and the scorned love of one's dear leader, unless one is disposed in that direction and derives considerable enjoyment from the effort.

Still, it's funny as hell to be looking at the latest battle from the edges of the fray. What has occurred to me, though, over the last few days of this most recent campaign to separate Bush and his failures from the ideology in which he and his former ardent admirers have been immersed all their lives, is that I wish Oscar Wilde were around today. Even a skeletal, desiccated Wilde could lay waste to today's American defenders of the crown.

Might Wilde have said the following about Bush's errant wars?:: "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

But, perhaps more appropriate to the argument described above, that of the former devotees of all things Bush heaping scorn on him for his failure to keep the conservative banner from dragging in the mud: "True friends stab you in the front."