I had dinner last night with a Left-oid acquaintance who mouthed the typical “anti-war” talking points during Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

But, when the topic of Georgia came up, and the only thing he would say on the topic was that this proves that America needs to “get off of Oil.” Then he changed the subject.

I write this to say that his rhetorical dodge mirrors Europe’s exactly. When America intervenes in a region militarily the lesson is that we are unwanted hegemonic invaders killing people for oil. But when Russia intervenes in a region militarily the “deeper lesson” is that Americans are “hooked” on oil and must change our society’s consumption habits.

The net effect of this rhetorical dodge is to rationalize a deep-seated denial that America can ever act in positive ways on the world stage, which is the memetic base for much of the anti-American propaganda spewed in international-ist fora around the globe.

Another twist: right now, the Left distinguishes between Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the U.S.’s interventions: theirs are OK, ours are bad. But, when The Lancet Journal reports the numbers of dead civilians in Georgia next month, I expect the Left will resort to equivocation instead – as in, “So what if they killed civilians, they’re just as bad as we are!”

It seems as if America’s elites want us to disarm all of our defensive faculties unilaterally, the intellectual ones right along with the material ones, such as land-mines and nukes.

Programmer’s onto something: It’s as if the Left was never weaned intellectually. Don’t these guys ever grow up?