Respectable conservatives allow liberals to be loyal only to the left, and to claim to be patriotic. As I pointed out on October 31, 1998, in FIVE WORDS AND EMMA LAZARUS, leftists wave the American flag and say that they are loyal to "all men are created equal" and open borders, but not to America or Americans.

Respectable conservatives are always saying how patriotic their liberal opponents are. Not only is liberal flag-waving not patriotic, liberals insist that anyone who is loyal to America as a land or a people is anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews (See July 29, 2000, ANOTHER WRITER IS PROUD TO HAVE NO FEELING FOR HIS HOMELAND OR HIS PEOPLE).

So when leftists wave the American flag it is absolutely meaningless, and conservatives are always grovelingly grateful to them for making even this token gesture. Liberal patriotism is a wooden nickel, and conservatives gobble it up.

Liberals, however, will not accept such fake currency when a symbol is important to them. For example, when you saw the Mexican flag being used as a symbol of the leftist grape boycott, it is meant to represent the interests of MEXICANS.

Likewise, when Mexican music was played and the first all-Spanish speech was spoken at the Republican Convention, it was not a meaningless token like Democrats waving the American flag. The media said over and over that they didn't want to be betrayed by Bush. They demand that this mean that Bush will do things for the PEOPLE OF THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO.

It means no more talk of protecting the US borders. It means no more English-only initiatives.

When Colin Powell got up there, he did not ask for symbols, either. He said he wanted affirmative action from Bush. He said Bush was trying to enforce affirmative action in Texas universities despite the fact that the Federal courts had outlawed it.

The crowd roared.

Another fascinating thing that Powell demanded was that conservatives abandon any effort to reach out to any minority "leaders" who are not firmly liberal. He said that today's black leadership, which is owned outright by the left, is the "real" leadership of the black community.

Republicans, he said, must only deal with these NAACP types.

CNN had talks with a group of "typical American voters." Most of the questions were aimed at the two black members of the tiny panel. They asked what these gentlemen wanted if they were to vote Republican. One said "affirmative action." The other said he might consider voting Republican if Republican Senators would confirm the Federal judges appointed by Clinton and blocked by the Senate.

Naturally CNN did not ask why your average American voter -- especially one who might vote Republican -- would just happen to be solely interested, not in education or taxes, but in the quick approval of Democratic judges. But that is not my point. My point is that both blacks, with perfect predictability, wanted specific liberal policies.

If you wave a Mexican flag at the left, you had better give something Americans have to Mexicans. If you talk about blacks, you had better be ready to give something white people have to blacks.

The left wants American jobs for Mexicans. They want university slots and jobs for blacks in place of more qualified whites.

They also accept hard cash.

By contrast, the right will take liberal flag waving and other wooden nickels and cry with gratitude. Those wimps wouldn't last five minutes in the hard left.

Hollywood is very worried about computer sites that give away music without paying for the copyrights. Right now it's music, but as technology advances, it will be easier and easier to reproduce and send
everything on the net that Hollywood puts out. So the same Hollywood money machine that pours out money against everybody else's property rights now has its own rights threatened by technology.

Sometimes there IS poetic justice. I am very much a free market type, but that is my academic and economic side. But I am also a thoroughly political creature, and when liberals get torn up by the leftist institutions they built and they promote, I go from being a reserved intellectual ex-professor to a happy, vengeful Pontiac, South Carolina redneck.

(For proof, see the May 7, 2000 article - MICROSOFT CASE: A LIBERAL GETS MUGGED).

To show that other serious political beings think exactly the same way that I do, I point to a recent congressional action on our trade treaty with China. Suddenly, LIBERAL senators and congressmen were loudly demanding that AMERICAN RIGHTS be protected and AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY be respected. I checked to see if there were any hallucinogens in my food.

I read on, and the explanation of this unliberal behavior became clear. All this sovereignty and defense of property rights had to do with COPYRIGHTS! China was selling videotapes and CDs of HOLLYWOOD output. Suddenly, property rights were sacred to the liberals. Unlike respectable conservatives, liberals are deadly serious about their politics. When THEIR side's property rights are threatened, they turn on a dime.

If only this had happened in the 1960s, even the respectable conservatives would have been FORCED to talk about liberal hypocrisy! That was when all the folk-singing lefties made millions on their albums as they spoke of how unimportant wealth was to True Idealists like themselves.

One 60s leftist hero, Abbie Hoffman, wrote a book called "Steal This Book!" Naturally, his leftist fans bought the book, and he never turned down a dime's worth of royalties. As a result of this and other profitable activism, Hoffman never had to do a day's work. Exactly like Marx and Engels, exactly like Lenin and Trotsky, he got to praise the virtues of the working class and thereby avoid doing any work himself.

Back in the 1960s, this kind of sudden threat from technology to the property rights of the lefties would have been really hilarious. After all that idealistic talk, we could have watched them out there suing for their money the way leftist "artists" are doing now.

The leftist Time-Warner crowd is in on today's lawsuits. Meanwhile, they say they are for minorities and foreigners against other people's property rights. But no respectable conservative will ever bring this up.

I can guarantee you that every politician who cashes Barbra Streisand's political contribution checks is going to battle for her royalty rights harder than any Texas congressman ever did for the oil business. Can you imagine a liberal allowing government regulations to hold down the price of Hollywood movie tickets the way the Federal government held down the price of Southern oil for decades (July 8, OIL AND HATING SOUTHERNERS)?

So while all the respectable conservatives are crying for poor, persecuted little Bill Gates and the property rights of Hollywood, I am having a good, loud, knee-slapping laugh.