Recently, I realized the reason that liberals are so unhappy is that everything throws them into a panic. I’m not just referring to things like armed men in uniform, be they members of the military or law enforcement, but, literally, everything, including the weather. In fact, in the midst of a world that sees the Russian bear expanding westward, the Chinese dragon expanding eastward and the entire Middle East going nuclear, we have such liberal icons as Barack Obama and Pope Francis insisting the greatest threat facing mankind is global warming. They base this contention on unscientific computer models, while ignoring the fact that the earth’s temperature has remained stable for the past 17 years.

What’s more, none of the nonsense Al Gore began spouting in the 1990s about rising sea levels, melting icebergs and drowning polar bears, has come to pass. But when one’s actual mission isn’t to save the planet, but to destroy capitalism and to become enormously wealthy doing it, facts are simply an inconvenient truth.

But this is always the case with the Left. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote a book called “Silent Spring,” warning of the ecological disaster wrought by DDT. Because the same pinheads were running things back then, she succeeded in getting the safest pesticide ever invented taken off the market. In Africa, alone, she was the reason that millions of people have died from malaria over the past half century.

A byproduct of Ms. Carson’s work is that the EPA was created and the cult of environmentalism was born.

A similar alarmist was Paul R. Ehrlich, who also hit the best seller list with his 1968 jeremiad, “The Population Bomb,” a literary effort that insisted the world’s population was expanding so quickly that we would soon run out of food and that people would be killing each other over a crust of bread.

Apparently, the decade of the 60s has a lot to answer for, besides Yippies, Nehru jackets, LBJ and bell-bottom trousers.

But we currently have our own sorry band of Chicken Littles, who, when they’re not running around in circles screaming about rising temperatures, enjoy pointing out that some people actually make more money than other people. They don’t bother considering whether some people are smarter or more creative than other people or work harder or that a great many of the whiners don’t work at all. Instead they reply to poll questions in the following manner: Is the distribution of wealth fair? Answer: 66% no, 27% yes. Should the government do more to address the gap? Answer: 57% yes, 39% no.

The worst thing about this class envy is that those who do the most to promote it are often those with the most money. But, apparently, so long as you condemn wealth disparity, it grants dispensation to the likes of the Clintons, the Obamas, Warren Buffet, George Clooney, Glyneth Paltrow, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner and all the other hypocrites who show up at Obama’s $35,000-a-plate fundraisers.

As you may have noticed, they’re the same crowd who go around pretending that black voters, who actually vote at a higher rate than white people, are being disenfranchised in America, and who insist with a straight face that voter identification is a plot to bring back slavery. It’s very off-putting to hear those running the plantations pretending that would be a bad thing.

Speaking of politicians, will the day ever come when one of them takes the stage and doesn’t pretend to spot an old chum in the crowd? The Clintons have it down to a science. They almost manage to carry it off, too, as Bill makes the initial discovery, touches Hillary’s arm and they then engage in the joint wave. The fact is, unless the guy is waving a check for $500,000, neither of them has the slightest interest in anyone not named Clinton.

Moreover, the Clintons have no long-lost friends. Every person they’ve known since exiting the birth canal has been dunned constantly for campaign contributions, speaking fees and bribes. The only thing that’s long-lost with these two creeps are ethics and whatever tiny vestige of decency that may have miraculously managed to survive their several decades in the public arena. And in those cases, they’re not indicating recognition, they’re waving bye-bye.

In case it’s escaped your notice, ours is a sexually-obsessed society. It explains why pornography is one of the few growth industries left in America. It also explains why the same people who pushed Viagra on the world are now trying to push an aphrodisiac for women. It just so happens that a lack of interest or potency is God’s way of saying, “Give it a rest. You’ve screwed enough for one lifetime.”

This obsession also helps explain the plethora of daily bulletins regarding Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, whom my friend Tom Pflimlin refers to as Trans-Jenner. It should give Americans pause when all the obnoxious things the Islamics say about us turn out to be true.

It also doesn’t help our nation’s image when Obama, who can’t help showing his contempt for Christians, Benjamin Netanyahu and gun owners, goes out of his way to pass along his congratulations to homosexual football players and commending Jenner for his “courage.”

Probably the worst thing to be said about us, though, is that our media is as corrupt as that which is state-run in China, Russia and North Korea. It’s the media, after all, that influences how Americans think about the issues and how we vote.

For instance, the media has relished the opportunity to drag the Duggar family through the gutter, not because one of their 19 children inappropriately touched his younger sisters several years ago while still a teenager, but because the Duggars, who take their religion seriously, have spoken out against same-sex marriages.

I would argue that if most people considered what sodomy involves, they wouldn’t be so quick to regard its practitioners as cuddly little teddy bears, all thanks to their positive depiction in movies and on TV. At the same time, the same folks in the media who wish to tar-and-feather the Duggars regard Bill Clinton, who has been a sexual predator most of his adult life, as a sterling character.

The media condemns all the Duggars, although only one of the 21 did anything wrong. I dare them to randomly pick any 21 people out of the phone book or out of Congress, for that matter, and find a lower percentage of criminal or sinful behavior.

Or, better yet, consider how the media treated the Kennedy clan. Even though Papa Kennedy was a bootlegger, Jack was a satyr, Ted was guilty of manslaughter, and a whole bunch of the younger ones have been drunks, addicts and rapists, the media still hasn’t stopped heaping praise on the Camelot of them.

The latest example of malfeasance in political reporting comes to us from the NY Times. The paper, obviously embarrassed to have been responsible for reporting on a few of Hillary Clinton’s endless number of scandals tried to get back into the good graces of its readership by front-paging the news that Mr. and Mrs. Marco Rubio had collected 17 speeding tickets over the past 19 years.

It probably bugged the Times that he had only gotten four and his wife had collected the other 13. What’s more, the Rubios apparently paid all of them in timely fashion and never once attempted to use his influence to quash them.

If the paper was trying to derail his candidacy, it was a lame attempt. After all, if Rubio garners the nomination and defeats Hillary in the general election, neither of the Rubios will ever drive again. In fact, they might even consider handing out bumper stickers reading: “Vote for Marco Rubio. Keep Jeanette Rubio Off Our Roads.”

Finally, it is time once again to conduct a Prelutsky Poll. So cast your vote for the man or woman you would most like to see as the GOP presidential candidate in 2016, not whom you suspect will be the nominee.

Send your vote to me at [email protected].

I ask only two things of you, Dear Reader: Please vote for just one person and type his or her name in the subject line so that I don’t even have to open the email in order to count your vote. Also, please don’t explain yourself. Save that for another time when I’m not busy counting noses.