My nausea at the fans of World War III is threatening to progress to projectile vomitting. As if that is not bad enough, this from some idiot: "...it is now a commonplace notion that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.".
Come again? I beg your pardon, but I am a liberal, and I have been mugged. I was 35 and I briefly wanted my mother (who was dead) and then I thought I probably should want a cop -- but I recovered from that notion quickly. Never, for an instant, was I even slightly inclined to any form of conservatism. I did not, even once, want to scold myself for carrying things of great sentimental value while strolling alone. I was not confused; I bore no responsibility for the theft of my possessions, the thieves bore total blame. And though I did not want to see them again, I knew that the greater danger was to fear and hate them, and to engage in the pretense that I could prevent anything similar from ever happening again by who knows what absurd, irrational means -- perhaps by costuming myself as poor and destitute before appearing ever again in public.
Furthermore, if the mugging of this liberal did anything, it made me MORE liberal, wanting to promote investment in more social programs which might have disabused those fatherless high school dropouts of the notion that success in this society was only for others unlike themselves.
The above quote, speaking of September 11, says that "America has been mugged.". Conservatism stockpiles, it worrys and reserves, and it keeps everything it can. Liberalism casts to the wind, it invests in hopes and in insupportable dreams, and it seeks to give away everything it can. Conservatism withdraws from what it fears -- behind unmatchable military force, expansive police powers, and more severe social stratifications, and it seeks to make greater distinctions between itself and others. Liberalism embraces what it fears -- inviting its detractors to join its internal debates, refusing to make labels into badges of entre and even refusing to create seclusions which one might need entre into, and it seeks to minimize distinctions between itself and others; indeed it seeks to diminish all distinctions.
A former liberal, become conservative, is a person who has learned fear. A liberal who remains a liberal simply knows the difference.
This will not help dissuade aggrieved Muslims from accusing the West of bias.