One often hears that those who fall for liberal claptrap have been brainwashed by their teachers, the media and the Hollywood elite. The trouble with that is it’s based on the presumption that these guttersnipes have brains to begin with, when there’s no evidence at all of that being the case.

For instance, California, the largest and possibly the most liberal state in the Union, is like a giant laboratory for a mad man. Once it’s proven by the likes of Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsome and their cronies in Sacramento, that something absolutely, positively, doesn’t work here, a number of the other 49 states can’t wait to try it out.

For instance, the California Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution stating “No public resources will be allowed to be used for any anti-Semitic or any other intolerant agitation.” In response, CAIR (Council of American-Islamic Relations) sent a letter claiming that HR 35 “stifles robust political debate on university campuses” and “contributes to a climate of intimidation faced by Muslim and Arab students on California campuses” when everyone knows it’s those very students who seem to have no other purpose on those campuses aside from intimidating Jewish students and shouting down speakers who happen to be either home-grown conservatives or Israeli diplomats.

Don’t expect the members of the California Assembly to stand up to CAIR, which ensures that few people connect the dots linking them to Middle East terrorist groups by using well-dressed, reasonable-sounding, English-speaking, front men on TV.

Speaking of college campuses, why aren’t Americans outraged by the fact that college tuition has increased by over 500% since the 1980s? Are the students getting a better education? Do books cost that much more? Or is it, as usual, attributable to the fact that costs invariably increase when the federal government sticks its nose in where it doesn’t belong?

When in the post-war years, thousands upon thousands of European and British scientists and engineers came to the U.S., it was referred to in their home countries as a brain drain. Now, when millions of uneducated Mexicans and Central Americans sneak across our border, it could best be described as a bean drain. Although Europe may have it worse, what with their millions of illiterate Muslims turning city after city into a cesspool, we shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back for being so hospitable. We have been played for suckers, and by continuing to extend health care, schooling and welfare, to people who have no right to be here, we are condemning ourselves and future generations to picking up the tab for millions of uninvited freeloaders.

The fact that there is more than a single sucker born every minute here in America is borne out in Chicago, where, according to a newspaper poll, the majority of citizens sided with the striking teachers. I mean, how stupid does someone have to be to side with those who are not only making, on average, $35,000-a-year more than they are, but work shorter hours, have bigger pensions, and who went on strike to prevent the biggest incompetents in their ranks from being fired?

If you’ve ever wondered what a conundrum is, the dictionary will tell you that it is a logical postulation that evades resolution. An example would be Barack Obama insisting time and again that he’s created 4.6 million jobs in the private sector even though the unemployment rate is higher now than when he took office.

The fact is the only jobs a president can take credit for are those in the public sector. He can, after all, hire more bureaucrats to fill all those offices in Washington, D.C. But when it comes to the private sector, all he can do is provide a healthy environment by cutting the tax rate, getting rid of the 90% of government regulations that do nothing but stifle businesses and removing the federal snout from all of the many places where it doesn’t belong.

What Obama doesn’t tell you is that the only reason that the unemployment rate is closer to 8% than 11% is because so many people have stopped looking for jobs that they’re no longer counted. So when Obama tells you what a great job he’s doing in turning around the economy, it’s a conundrum, with the emphasis on the first syllable.

What’s more, I recently saw the governor of South Dakota on TV reporting that thousands of good-paying jobs are going wanting in his state because they can’t find trained machinists and welders. In the meantime, parents are still sending their tots off to colleges where they can major in Black, Hispanic and Lesbian, studies for four years before graduating and moving back home. What’s more, liberal arts departments are still churning out all those insufferable English majors who will bore future generations of cocktail party guests nattering on about the imagery to be found in Ezra Pound’s poetry.

Finally, what too many of us on the Right lack, besides control of the schools and the mass media, is the backbone required to ridicule the other side with the same sense of impunity they display when calling us fascists, racists, homophobes and Astroturf traitors, even if they happen to be blacks, liberal Jews, unwed mothers, Muslims, Arabs, gay activists, Hollywood creeps and illegal aliens.

So long as we pretend that the sacred cows of the Left are equally sacred to us, the battle is lost and the livestock will continue to make a mess on our front lawns.