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"  Apparently, when I was off dancing at the Fezziwigs&amp;#039; annual Christmas Ball, young Cardinal Douthat unlimbered himself on the topic of guns, and what we do with them. First, though, the Connecticut-born, prep-school-nurtured, Harvard-educated, New York Times ideological affirmative action hire had to give voice to his inner peckerwood. Hilarity ensued. The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York&amp;#039;s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite. Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan&amp;#039;s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole.  The Acela Corridor Elite? Sweet Home Alabama, dude, just move to fking Anniston and get it over with, OK? I&amp;#039;d lose the Maynard G. Krebs chin-shrub first, though. The rest of it is boilerplate conservative hoohah, until we get to his assessment of the state of our political divide in which His Eminence once again is beset on all sides by the howls of the unreasoning strawmen who march across his imagination. The establishment view is interventionist, corporatist and culturally liberal. It thinks that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials working hand in glove with business interests. It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct, and other liberties - from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners - as negotiable at best. It thinks that the elite should pay slightly higher taxes, and everyone else should give up guns, SUVs and Big Gulps and live more like, well, Manhattanites. It allows the president an entirely free hand overseas, and takes the Bush-Obama continuities in foreign policy for granted. The right-wing view is embittered, paranoid and confused. It opposes anything the establishment supports but doesn&amp;#039;t know what it wants to do instead. (Defund government or protect Medicare? Break up the banks or deregulate them? Send more troops to Libya or don&amp;#039;t get involved? Protect our liberties or put our schools on lockdown?) Sometimes the right&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;just say no&amp;quot; approach holds the establishment at bay - as on climate change and immigration, to date. But sometimes, as the House Republicans are demonstrating in the budget showdown, it makes the eventual defeat that much more sweeping. You could run an Indy car 200 laps on the undistilled stupid in that paragraph. One side believes in representative government, with all its flaws, and the other side is populated by confused paranoids, and His Eminence thereby believes that this demonstrates both sides to be at fault. And does he really believe, with the Arctic melting at a record pace and Antarctica falling to pieces and storms of such increasing magnitude that we&amp;#039;re naming them in the middle of winter now, that the fact that &amp;quot;the right&amp;quot; has been able to stall &amp;quot;the establishment&amp;quot; on climate change is a good thing? I knew I shouldn&amp;#039;t trust anyone from the Acela Corridor. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17027/ross-douthat-bloomberg-lapierre-guns-122612/?src=rss>