Take equal parts: the thuggish fervor of revolutionary savages, the self-insulating arrogance of over educated post-adolescents, and the insipid entitlement of overindulged brats. Add a healthy amount of banal utopian idealism. And now - as per this week's top Council post from The Razor - stir:

This [peace] symbol represents the oppression of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It played an important role in the genocide of the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and the continuing atrocities in Tibet, Burma and Sudan. Throughout its 50 year history it has been used as a weapon solely against democracies in support of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. It's body count is second only to the swastika yet is viewed as a symbol of peace by millions. The roots of this symbol are soaked in the blood of innocents. The group credited for popularizing the symbol, a stylized combination of the semaphore signals for 'N' and 'D' (for nuclear disarmament), is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The CND was founded in 1958 by supporters of the Soviet Union including a spy for the East German Stasi... Another member of the CND Granny Melita Norwood was the KGB's top spy in the UK, passing secrets to them until she was arrested in 1999 at the age of 87 . She died unrepentant and free in 2005. The Mirror wrote at the time "she never regretted her betrayal and was committed to the Soviet cause and to 'peace and socialism' up to her death." In 1982 Deputy CIA Director John McMahon testified before Congress that the Soviet Union had provided $100,000,000 to anti-nuclear groups including the CND.

The more things change... JoshuaPundit's post about how Cheney systematically dismantled Biden - an incident that he seemed to find as objectively delightful as I did - was tied for second with my complaints about the unblinking inanity of liberal faux expertise. His post describes what happens when someone who actually knows something is asked to bluntly appraise the opposite of that. My concerns have more to do with how an entire political culture could decide that that guy was the height of nuanced thinking.

I was reading one of Abba Eban's biographies for this post and came across this passage: "I did not believe that [experts] would risk their professional reputations by making an appraisal that could easily be refuted by events." I'm not sure if that was ever true. But it's certainly not true any more. Nowadays we call experts who are refuted by facts "Middle East Studies professors" and they write blogs for the consumption of blissfully oblivious - but not unsophisticated - liberal cocktail party glitterati. If they're not in academia they're in politics - as the top non-Council post outlines - wrecking the economy:

So they will "transform our economy." Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them. Obama and Emanuel want us to believe that their blueprint for reform will bring recovery from the recession. Yet we have recovered from past recessions without undertaking a radical social and economic transformation. In fact, reform would impede recovery.

Or as one of the second-place posts outlines, undermining science policy. Or as the other second-place post demonstrates, grossly misunderstanding global ideological conflicts. Starting about 20 days into next year this combination of pretentious over-educated arrogance and objective ahistorical ignorance will be known as "official White House policy." I dunno about you but I'm pretty psyched for 2009.

References and previously after the jump...