I don’t believe it’s an accident that the symbol of conservatives is the mighty elephant, the animal that represents strength, loyalty and wisdom, whereas the symbol of liberals is the donkey, the beast that best represents stupidity and stubbornness.

Of course, if the Democrats ever decide to trade the donkey in for a more modern look, they need look no further than the big-eared creature braying in the Oval Office.

Recently, a friend sent me a few quotes from Obama’s two books, quotes which make his victory in 2008 all the more amazing and depressing.

For instance, in “Dreams From My Father,” he or Bill Ayers wrote: “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

Or how about: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race”?

The scam artist who insisted he would preside over the first post-racial presidency also shared the following thoughts: “It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names” and “I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself: the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”

In “Audacity of Hope,” a line he cribbed from a sermon by Jeremiah Wright, he wrote: “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

No mention of the fact that since 1979, when Jimmy Carter allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to set up shop in Iran, it’s been the Muslims who have been responsible for nearly all the ugly political winds that have blown through lower Manhattan and nearly every other part of the world.

Those of us who believed that the Casey Anthony jury provided us with the strongest indictment of our legal system since O.J. Simpson’s jury last convened may have to reconsider our conviction that such matters are best left to judges. It seems that in Tacoma, Washington, a judge, who allowed a convicted child molester to serve as his own attorney, has concluded that he has no option but to permit the freak to review and review and review the evidence in the case, even though most of the evidence consists of scores of child porn videos that the pervert shot of his young victims.

Even though most of those on the Left are eager to write off religious believers as narrow-minded, ignorant and superstitious, that hasn’t been my experience. Although I am not religious, I’ve never seen any reason to ridicule those who are or to pretend that I’m therefore their intellectual superior simply because I happen to lack their faith. From my perspective, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and most other believers – at least here in America – seem to have adopted a live-and-let-live policy.

The only real close-minded fanatics I’m aware of are Muslims and atheistic zealots, and, frankly, I don’t see that they’re contributing greatly to the advancement of civilization. What’s more, they are the two most intolerant groups on the planet. Those in the first group are happy to kill all non-Muslims, not to mention Muslims belonging to a different sect. Those in the second group, for all their anti-religious rhetoric, worship at the feet of left-wing politicians, put their faith in the likes of Barack Obama and Al Gore and, while crusading against everything they regard as unhealthy, which includes such things as salt, trans-fats, tobacco and even circumcision, are actively engaged in promoting the homosexual, bi-sexual and transgender, life styles.

I suppose we should all be grateful that only one of the two groups subscribes to suicide bombings and beheadings. At least so far.

Finally, I think it’s high time we stopped accusing progressives of drinking the Kool-Aid. I understand it’s a reference to the 909 sheep-like followers of cult leader Jim Jones, who, at his insistence, killed themselves by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide back in 1978.

For one thing, these fools on the Left are not committing suicide; rather, like their Socialist cronies in Greece and other parts of Europe, they’re destroying our nation’s economy, one entitlement at a time.

Instead of Kool-Aid, what American liberals are actually imbibing is something akin to bathtub gin, the wood alcohol derivative so prevalent during Prohibition. Before eventually killing off those with a taste for rotgut, it made them drunk, then blind and finally crazy.

That, so far as I can see, is pretty much the road to perdition as served up by left-wing bartenders Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama.