Nietzsche has been dead for more than a hundred years, yet today his reputation is higher than ever. Indeed Nietzsche is probably the leading philosopher to whom liberal intellectuals and academics look for inspiration and guidance. For example, the late Robert Solomon of the University of Texas at Austin, in his book Living With Nietzsche, proclaims Nietzsche to be the most insightful and relevant thinker for our time.

How can this be? Nietzsche was openly and contemptuously opposed to most of the cardinal tenets of modern liberalism. For instance, he hated democracy and equality and proclaimed both to be the pathetic legacy of Christianity. He denounced socialism in even-more-harsh terms, declaring it fit for only cows and women. Speaking of women, Nietzsche was not exactly a feminist. Among his pungent sayings: "Whenever a woman is a scholar there is usually something wrong with her sex organs." Or, "When thou goest to woman, do not forget thy whip."

In addition, Nietzsche exalts what he terms "master morality" and condemns what he terms "slave morality." And what is slave morality? Basically it is the liberal virtue of compassion which Nietzsche treats entirely as a vice. For Nietzsche it is the losers of society--the slaves--who have invented compassion as a virtue in order to tie down the masters who rightly and uninhibitedly dominate them. Nietzsche views slave morality as motivated by resentment, jealousy and inferiority complex all masquerading as righteousness. You cannot embrace Nietzsche's doctrine without seeing, say, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King in an entirely new light.

Moreover, Nietzsche condemns compassion even on the part of the giver. Nietzsche argues that "to see others suffer does one good" and that "to be unwilling to help can be nobler than the virtue which jumps to help." Nietzsche declares that compassion, far from being praiseworthy, is actually a cunning way for people to make themselves feel superior to others, and then to congratulate themselves for being in a position to help those lower people. Again, one comes away from reading Nietzsche with a far less benign view of people like George Soros and Nancy Pelosi.

So why does the cultural left, as represented by liberal intellectuals like Solomon, love Nietzsche so much? I think there are two reasons. The first is that Nietzsche is a rabid atheist. Not only does Nietzsche declate that "God is dead" but he also insists that Western society must rid itself of all vestiges of Christian morality. This goes way beyond atheists like Richard Dawkins who feebly proclaim themselves "cultural Christians."

Second, Nietzsche is an unabashed elitist. He contrasts the elite with what he terms "the herd." This is a wonderful distinction that enables half-educated liberals to say to themselves, "Hey, when Nietzsche scorns the herd he must be talking about my parents and my pastor and all those people who think that I am a selfish loser and a nerd. And when Nietzsche praises the lone rebel who dares to reject morality in the name of a higher conscience, well, he must have had me in mind!"

P.S. Read the childish and abusive reaction from atheists (including some who can do no better than pretend to be me) to see that this analysis strikes a chord. "When you cannot answer a man's argument, do not panic. You can always call him names."

Why are secular liberals so unhappy? This question is provocatively discussed in Arthur Brooks' new book Gross National Happiness. Brooks is a sociologist and statistician at Syracuse University. I am reading his book while vacationing with my lovely wife on the beautiful island of Santorini. So it's natural for me, watching the most beautiful sunsets in the world, martini in hand, to think about the question of happiness.

Brooks' book is full of interesting data. We learn, for instance, that money does buy happiness, but only upto a point. Poor people and poor countries are unhappy, and by the self-description of the people involved. So the movement from grinding poverty to the comfortable middle-class brings a huge gain in happiness. But interestingly economic improvement at this point brings diminishing marginal returns. This is not to say that rich people aren't happier: they are. But not by very much.

Brooks also shows that, in his own words, "people who say they are conservative or very conservative are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy than are people who call themselves liberal or very liberal. Conservatives are much less likely to say they are dissatisfied with themselves, that they are inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their future." Conservatives' mental health is far better than that of liberals.

Equally fascinating, Brooks notes that "faith is an incredible predictor, and cause, of happiness. Religious people of all faiths are much, much happier on average than secularists." Specifically, 43 percent of those who attend church weekly or more call themselves "very happy," versus 23 percent who attend seldom or never. Observant Jews and Christians are by Brooks' measure the happiest people in America.

So why are secular liberals in general so miserable? I offer two reasons. The first is that liberals are political utopians. They consider human nature to be wonderful, and they expect freedom to be used wonderfully well. So they are always bitterly disappointed when they discover that this is not the case. Conservatives, by contrast, have a dimmer view of human nature. So their expectations are more modest. When things don't turn out half-badly, conservatives are pleasantly surprised. They are happier because it takes less to make them happier.

It's not too hard to figure out why religious people are happier. Belief in God gives people a powerful sense of higher purpose in life. It assures people that the universe is in the benign hands of a omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate higher power. It offers people a code for how to live. It gives us a reason to hope in cosmic justice, which is better than the imperfect justice of our terrestrial world.

By contrast, secular people have little to hope for. They are sure that they came from nowhere--the chance product of random mutation and natural selection--and are going nowhere. They know that terrible things happen, and they don't believe there is any purpose in this. No wonder that secular people have so few children: they have much less reason than religious people to believe in the future.

So why is an atheist like Richard Dawkins so frequently wearing a conspitated scowl? And why am I usually smiling? Some may attribute these differences to our genetic temperaments. Others may put it down to the fact that I live in sunny California, eating healthy nouvelle cuisine and going on walking tours in Santorini. Dawkins, by contrast, lives in dank, rainy England and eats abominable English food. ("May I offer you some more kidney pie, Professor Dawkins? It's somewhat bland, I know, but perhaps it will work as a laxative.")

But Arthur Brooks would probably say that our temperaments are also the consequences of two very different worldviews, one producing the wholesome optimism of What's So Great About Christianity, the other the angry bitterness of The God Delusion. Read Brooks' new book yourself to see if he's right.

My most recent posting on "That Notorious Buckley AIDS Column" produced a torrential response, including some wild attacks on me threatening to beat me up and even sue me if I didn't take the post down. My intention was to keep the post up for a day or so, but when I saw this response, I decided to let it stay up through the weekend. Some of my critics are real goons, and it's important to teach these thugs a lesson in free speech.

Besides, what were they getting so hysterical about? I got the idea for the post by reading responses to my Buckley eulogy on the occasion of his death. All I did was tell the full story about the famou Buckley AIDS column, reporting how it came about, what the reaction was, and giving an accurate account of a subsequent National Review contest about the column. My own account of Buckley's article was not uncritical, and to the degree that the humor was offensive the culprits were Buckley himself and his associate Jeff Hart. Yet I took the brunt of the abuse.

A little secret about me: I enjoy this stuff. When I was editor of the Dartmouth Review we used to tell the deans that taking on our student newspaper was like wrestling with a pig: not only did it get everyone dirty, but the pig liked it! I guess my Dartmouth experience has made me a little thin-skinned with regard to a certain type of attack. I always try to learn from intelligent criticism, but when I get outright obscenity and threats and name-calling, I sit by my swimming pool with a drink in my hand and laugh my head off.

Some of my pals who read this blog do periodically ask why some of my critics are so out of control. One of my friends even printed out a bunch of responses to my recent posts, handing me a sampling. I reproduce a few items to give you the flavor.

"Dinesh you should be executed."

"Dear Dick (I mean Dinesh)"

"We are stupid if we let this sand n*gg*r speak for us. Go home."

"This guy is a friggin' dot head."

"Hypocritical jerkoff."

"Go back to India you narrow-minded punk. You don't have a f*ck*ng clue, bitch."

"You have sh*t for brains. You are a moron too."

"I f*ck*ng hate the way Dinesh uses that stupid voice...I want to punch him in the face."

"Oh Double D (that stands for Double Douchebag by the way)"

"Dinesh is far and away the dumbest human being on this planet."

"It's asshole immigrants like Dineshit, an untouchable from India is why I am against immigration."

"Self-absorbed cretin."

"You only need to take a look at Dinesh ato know something is wrong with him. He is the quintessential little ugly deformed fascist. Weird lower lip, sticks straight out, weird pink ledge. Goofy ears. Little weird looking fascist nerd with a barren intellect and an even more despitable soul."

"I hope you die. What a piece of crap."

"The only rational response is for me to tell you are that you are simply full of sh*t and need to pull your head out of your ass."

I've been examining these comments for valid criticisms. Maybe I am a little self-absorbed, although my critics seem far more absorbed with me than I am. Hypocrisy I plead guilty to: it simply means that I have higher standards than I can live up to. I have never claimed to be a handsome guy, although through some stroke of luck I managed to marry a woman who looks like a model: maybe she is partially blind. I doubt I am the dumbest human being on the planet although I may be--a) the dumbest guy to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from an Ivy League college, b) the dumbest guy to serve in his mid-twenties in the White House, c) the dumbest guy to have taught at Harvard and served as a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, d) the dumbest guy to have written five New York Times bestsellers. Sometimes I wonder what I might have accomplished if I was a little smarter.

Now let's turn to these critics. It's striking that the cultural left, which wears the public face of tolerance and openness, quickly drops this cover when it's orthodoxies are questioned. Suddenly ad hominem epithets fly, and the intolerance and outright bigotry that is supposed to be the province of the right is quickly exposed as a distinctive feature of the secular left. I suspect that these folks are used to hanging out with people who share their political and cultural assumptions. They are not used to having these assumptions questioned. Unable to counter with facts and arguments, their only weapons are epithets and abuse. I have encountered this combination of left-wing and lowbrow on the campus, usually at second and third-rate universities. There occasionally I encounter a student who can do no better than yell "fascist" and run out of the room. In a way I feel sorry for him: his worldview has been shattered, and his abuse is simply an indication of the inner confusion he is experiencing.

To my friends and fans who keep encouraging me: No need to tell me to keep my chin up. It's already up. In fact, I feel blessed to have such irrational invective hurled at me. As long as my critics continue to reveal themselves as mean-spirited, foul-mouthed racists, how can I possibly lose the argument? Indeed such reactions from such people tell me that I must be doing something right.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
--Theodore Roosevelt

Listening to the fatuous Al Gore claim his undeserved Nobel Prize and maunder on about how America is ruining the planet makes me realize how fortunate America is to have as its president George W. Bush. Yes, Bush has his ample share of failings. He occasionally speaks at the fifth-grade level. He is too willing to surround himself with cronies and sycophants. An unsupple man, Bush sometimes reminds me of the toy soldier who walks into the wall and keeps going.

Bush's weaknesses, however, are more than compensated for by his one great strength. This is a man with unbelievable tenacity. No American president in my lifetime, not even Reagan, had Bush's guts. Perhaps one would have to go all the way back to Franklin or Teddy Roosevelt to find comparable determination. On the international stage, Bush's stamina recalls that of Churchill. Consider: when Bush was elected in 2000 with the tiniest conceivable margin--a margin so slender it required Supreme Court intervention to place him in the Oval Office--I was sure that Bush's proposed tax cuts were dead. But no: Bush pushed ahead and got most of what he proposed. And the subsequent health of the economy--low interest rates, low unemployment, steady growth--has undoubtedly been nourished by Bush's tax cuts.

Then in 2006, after the midterm debacle, I thought that Bush's Iraq policy was finished. And you could hear the pundits and the newly-elected Democratic congressmen and the pathological Bush-haters gleefully declaring, "Now he's going to have to start pulling out of Iraq." Instead Bush pressed for an increase of 20,000-25,000 troops. Incredibly, he got it. Congress shrieked and howled but went along. The American people were very doubtful, but Bush serenely told them to "wait and see." Bush has seemingly singe-handedly pursued his vision for Iraq even when his allies both at home and abroad have dwindled or lost their nerve. And once again Bush's policy seems to be working. Iraq is becoming more peaceful, and apparently there are Shia and Sunni leaders cooperating with the Americans. The Bush-haters are still with us, but the wind has gone out of the antiwar movement.

Bush has had a tough second term in office. But I think history will be kinder to him than the opinion polls, at least in the past couple of years, have been. When the country looks back at Iraq and sees a standing, even if fragile, democracy, Americans will see that when they became impatient, Bush forged ahead. When they were ready to give up, he was undeterred. And as a consequence the Middle East has its first Muslim democracy, and a pro-American democracy to boot. The lesson of Iraq may well be: Thank God we didn't listen to those advocates of defeat on the left; if we had, it would have been Vietnam all over again.

The diplomat Clare Luce once wrote that history, which has no room for clutter, will remember every president by just one line. I'm not quite sure how Bill Clinton will be remembered: perhaps his only distinguishing mark will be the one that Paula Jones identified. As for Bush, he will go down in history as the president who refused to back down, and if staying the course in Iraq proves to be the right move, then Bush could be remembered as one of America's great presidents.

Ever since Moveon.org made its clumsy and irresponsible attack on General David Petraeus, describing him in ads as "General Betray Us," the cultural left has been looking to paint the right as equally irresponsible. Media Matters, which monitors right-wing talk radio, believes it has found the evidence right out of the horse's mouth. The horse, in this case, is Rush Limbaugh. Apparently some in Congress are even considering a resolution to condemn Limbaugh.

I've carefully reviewed the transcript of Limbaugh's September 26 program, as provided by Media Matters. I invite you to read it for yourself. What it shows is that Limbaugh is indeed guilty of simplistic argument and dismissive bravado. But he's not guilty of smearing troops who happen to oppose the Iraq war as unpatriotic. This is the heart of the Media Matters accusation, and it implodes upon scrutiny.

I can't say I'm going to read Rosie O'Donnell's new memoir, which isn't going to stop me from commenting on it. I'm not reviewing the book, of course, which seems not even to be a book, more like an impromptu rant of the sort that Rosie is now known for. If I want jumbled incoherence, I'd prefer Tristram Shandy; if I want stream of consciousness, I'd rather get it from James Joyce.

If you're wondering why the left hates Clarence Thomas so much, the answer can be given in one sentence: here is a black man who has left the liberal plantation. This is not supposed to happen. Those of us who are "persons of color" are supposed to march in liberal lockstep, spinning out elaborate tales of victimization and dutifully voting for the Democrats on election day. If we don't, we're accused of selling out to the white man.

Now here's the official story. The liberal group Moveon.org approached the New York Times about running a full-page ad on Monday, September 10. This date was chosen because it was right before the September 11 anniversary, and just about the time that General David Petraeus was testifying to Congress on progress in Iraq. An ad salesperson for the Times somehow charged Moveon.org $66,575 for the ad. This was less than half the actual price for a full page ad that is placed to run on a specified date. Eventually this clerical error was discovered, and the New York Times reported on Wednesday that Moveon.org cut the paper a check for the remaining $77,508.

President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University is a very open-minded guy, in his own opinion. In inviting the Iranian prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia, he issued this statement. "Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas...Necessarily on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs that many, most of even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialog and reason."

So why won't Bollinger allow the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) to recruit on the Columbia campus? ROTC was expelled from Columbia in the late sixties. In 2003 a majority of students said they wanted ROTC back, to give students the choice to serve their country in this way. The Columbia faculty opposed the measure, however, and Bollinger sided with them against the students.

What is the problem with ROTC as far as Columbia University is concerned? Apparently Bollinger and other left-wingers on the faculty can't stand the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning homosexuals. Yet this policy, devised and introduced by the Clinton administration, respects the privacy of homosexual soldiers on the condition that they aren't open or flagrant about being gay. Even if you disagree with the military, Bollinger himself says that Columbia is open to allowing ideas that are "offensive and even odious." Surely students are capable of hearing Bollinger's concerns about ROTC and then making up their own minds about whether to enroll!

Meanwhile, Iran's policies toward homosexuals are--shall we say--somewhat more stringent. I visited the website of Human Rights Watch where the country's sorry record is pretty well laid out. A few months ago, to take a random example, the Iranian police raided a home where men were allegedly dressed up as women. The men were accused of homosexuality, detained without a lawyer, and beaten. Perhaps they should consider themselves lucky: in the past Iran has not hesitated to execute homosexuals. Last November two men were strung up in the northern town of Gorgan for engaging in homosexual acts. (Lesbianism is apparently punished not by death but by public whipping.)

It's interesting to see that Columbia has such wide parameters when it comes to giving Islamic radicals like Ahmadinejad a forum on campus. Actually I don't agree with conservatives who say that the man should be prevented from speaking. Let him come and let him talk. But at the same time Columbia should let ROTC return to campus. Moreover, Columbia and other universities should be just as open to ideas from the right as they are to ideas from the left and from the Islamic radicals. Isn't it time Bollinger and his thick-headed colleagues realized that free speech and diversity should be valued across the political spectrum?

In 2004, a leading critic of the Bush administration issued a stinging critique of the U.S. government's war on terror. He charged that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush continued reading to children "a little girl's story about a goat and its butting." The critic insisted that Bush invaded Iraq because of "oil and more business for his private companies." Bush knew Iraq posed no security threat but "the black gold blinded him." As a consequence, "Bush's hands are coverd with blood" and Iraq has become a "quagmire." Yet Bush refuses to change course because of "the enormity of the contracts won by large corporations like Halliburton." Moreover, in the name of fighting terror, Bush has "brought tyranny and the suppression of liberties" through such measures as "the Patriot Act."

Michael Moore? Al Franken? Nancy Pelosi? Actually, it's Bin Laden in his address to the American people on the eve of the 2004 election. In his latest video Bin Laden is at it again, doing his best Michael Moore imitation. Remove the Koranic references and exhortations to convert to Islam and Bin Laden sounds indistinguishable from Moore. He attacks Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the neocons, and he denounces the role of money in politics. (Alas, he forgot to mention that Guantanamo captives get better health care than 9/11 survivors.) Now think of how odd this is. Imagine if Hitler had issued regular missiles during World War II in which he praised a group of Americans and cited from their writings and repeated their arguments with such precision that it would be hard to tell his words from theirs. The reaction in America, I'm sure, would be one of unmitigated outrage!

So what's going on here? My book The Enemy at Home has the full story, but we get a hint of the answer from Bin Laden himself. In his latest video he says that there is a twofold solution to defeating Bush's war on terror. "The first is from our side...and the second is from your side." The first part lies with his jihadists, who he says are doing their part to create the terror. The second part lies with the American left, which is expected to use the terror to demoralize the American people and urge them to retreat. Bin Laden specifically directs our attention to the writings of folks like Noam Chomsky, whom he praises as offering a correct (i.e. Bin Laden's own) view of the situation. So Bin Laden is trying to sway American public opinion by mouthing the arguments of the American left--including calls for campaign finance reform!--and he is also counting on leftists like Moore and Chomsky to convince the American people to retreat from Iraq and give up on Bush's war on terror.

So far the Bin Laden strategy is working beautifully. But given all the leftists and Bush-bashers that Bin Laden has cited by name (Robert Fisk, William Blum, Michael Scheuer, Noam Chomsky), I wonder if Moore is a little upset that Bin Laden isn't giving him enough credit.

Rigoberta Menchu is probably the most famous Guatemalan of Mayan ancestry, having won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992. While the wacky Scandinavians commended her as a representative voice of the native Indian people, just how "representative" Rigoberta Menchu is can be discerned from the results of Guatemala's presidential election. The results, released on Monday, show that Menchu came in sixth in a field of 14 with just 3 percent of the vote.

Who is Rigoberta Menchu? I first encountered her name in the Stanford multicultural curriculum while I was researching my first book Illiberal Education. Interestingly one Stanford professor described Rigoberta as a "quadruple victim" of oppression. That's right, a quadruple victim. She was a person of color and a victim of racism, a woman and a victim of sexism, a South Central American (thank you, commenters) and a victim of North American colonialism, and a Mayan of Indian descent and hence oppressed by the light-skinned ruling class of Guatemala. Rigoberta's harrowing tale of victim hood is eloquently told in her autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchu.

Move over Oprah! Welcome to the Osama Bin Laden Book Club. In his most recent video message, Bin Laden extols the works of the leftist author Noam Chomsky and he also directs Americans to read the book Imperial Hubris written by former CIA analyst and Bush critic Michael Scheuer. Scheuer places the blame for the turmoil in Iraq and the Middle East squarely on Bush, and Chomsky wrote of 9/11, "As atrocities go it doesn't rank very high." Indeed for Chomsky the only significance of 9/11 was that usually it is America that is responsible for mass atrocities while "for the first time the guns have been directed the other way. That is dramatic change." Chomsky, like Bin Laden, takes the view that we had it coming.