"What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition," writes Brooks. "Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men."

It's not that transparent to me. I don't think I can call Joe Lieberman kind-hearted. In fact, I most recently called him a "bloodthirsty warmongering appeasnik". What else can you call someone that called for invading Iraq even before Dick Cheney did...with, really, no rationale?

I know it's hard for some people to understand, but invading other countries and blowing up their stuff and killing their people cannot be considered kind-hearted. Even General Patton would agree with me, and he had a decent justification to act like a bloodthirsty warmonger. So, I cannot concede David's point that Holy Joe is kind-hearted. As for whether he is well-intentioned? I don't know. How can you tell a freshly raped woman to drive around Connecticut until she finds a hospital that has an emergency contraception kit and is willing to use it? How can such a statement be construed as well-intentioned? I just don't think it can be considered well-intentioned. Maybe if David Brooks was a woman and she got raped he could explain to it me in a way that I could understand. For now, I'm not getting it. I don't get the following, either.

...over the past few years [Lieberman] has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain."

"I can't reproduce the typical assaults that have been directed at him over the Internet, because they are so laced with profanity and ugliness, but they are ginned up by ideological masseurs who salve their followers' psychic wounds by arousing their rage at objects of mutual hate," Brooks adds.

How do you salve a wound by arousing hate? I thought you salved a wound by beating Fox News Democrats in free and fair primary elections. I guess I am not really proficient as an ideological masseur. I must take some more lessons. At nights. Or on weekends. I do confess, however, that my writings on Lieberman are often laced with profanities and insults. I can't help it. I don't like him. I don't hate him either. I just wish he would go away and wash dishes somewhere for $5.25 an hour until God forgives him.

It's good to know that Lieberman is a Scoop Jackson Democrat, though, David. That puts him right there with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol. My kind of guys. Right there in the center. Even I wouldn't go so far as to paint Lieberman with that brush. He's not that evil.

"Liberal interest groups that seek practical goals, like the AFL-CIO and the League of Conservation Voters, back Lieberman," writes Brooks. "But the netroots now seek to purge what's left of the Scoop Jackson Democrats, and to eliminate those who have had contact with the evildoers in the other party, because movements are deemed to prosper to the extent they achieve holiness unmarred."

Brooks suggests that many Democrats silently fear and "despise" the netroots.

"Over the past few years, polarizers have dominated Congress because people who actually represent most Americans have been too timid or intellectually vacuous to stand up," writes Brooks. "Even today many Democrats who privately despise the netroots lie low, hoping the anger won't be directed at them."

Maybe David Brooks doesn't understand. We want Democrats that despise us to lie low and avoid our wrath. We don't want them stepping all over the message of the party. We don't want them voting for cloture on Alito. Get it? We don't want them to be one of our Senators from Connecticut. Is that so hard to fathom?

Message to Brooks, the LA Times, and everyone else. Ideological purity is not the issue. Telling rape victims to go for car rides is the issue. Opposing a timetable in Iraq is the issue. Voting for cloture on Alito is the issue. Saying 'we criticize the President in wartime at our peril' is the issue. Chumming it up with Sean Hannity and other Fox News yahoos is the issue. There are a lot of issues. But, for intellectual vacuousness, you can hardly do better than Joe Lieberman's 11/29/05 column in the Wall Street Journal. That is, unless you read any of David Brooks's garbage. He's always ripe for ridicule.

Spanish Civil War my ass.