I realize that many conservatives are frustrated because they can’t amass sufficient evidence to have all liberals rounded up and sent to camps on treason charges. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it’s been a while since a professional conservative writer expressed that frustration by just making stuff up about liberals and accusing us of treason for what he imagines we’re guilty of. But that’s what Richard Brookhiser does in his current New York Observer column. He writes:

How long will it be before American peaceniks arrive in Pyongyang to stand in solidarity with the Dear Leader and the dead Great Leader? We know what the cast of characters will be: Unitarian ministers, Jewish Buddhists, unemployed poets, white-haired hippies from the Green Mountains. We know what they will do: form a human chain, give interviews to CNN, hold up hand-lettered signs ("Give Peace A Chance," "Say NO To Cowboy Bush"). Nominally, they will be there because they don’t want war. Emotionally, they will be there because they admire North Korea. They admire it because it isn’t the United States. We know this will be the scenario, because it’s already happening, with Iraq as the peg for moral superiority.

I’ll say this flat out: I have not heard or read a single word of praise for Kim -- or Saddam or the leaders of al-Qaeda, for that matter -- from any left-wing American. If there is any respect or admiration for these men on the American left, it’s invisible to me. Yes, I imagine there is a sad old-school Marxist contingent or two out there that dutifully praises Kim, but I simply don’t know who these people are. The links at right of this page give, I think, a fairly representative sampling of left thinking right now. Scour them. Scour the links at those links. Find any praise for Kim. Go on, I dare you.

You’ll recall that in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when attacking liberalism was Priority One in the war on terrorism for many on the right, the evidence of fifth-columnism those right-wingers amassed was laughable: an isolated picket sign here, an ill-considered flip remark by a professor there. Well, Brookhiser’s data set is even more pathetic: one item of graffiti.

"Make Love To Iraq" was the slogan I saw stenciled on a mailbox in the East Village. But is Iraq (more precisely, its regime) lovable?

No, it isn’t -- and, schmuck, the graffitist isn’t saying it is. I lived in the East Village for seven years in the 1980s. I know what this graffito is: it’s a little koan of hipster inscrutability. The big, honking hint is the fact that it doesn’t say “Love Saddam.” Clearly it’s not meant to be taken literally -- what it recommends is essentially impossible for anyone who reads it to accomplish. The graffito could well be a sneering allusion to the old slogan “Make Love, Not War,” which would be ancient history for a spray-paint wielder who was probably born in the 1980s. If so, the graffito isn’t even left-wing.

Thanks for playing, Richard. Try again sometime.