King Lear was accomplished, old, and tired and resigned his power to those who flattered him. But flattery is theft. No less today than in Lear’s case, it is the extortion of service or license in exchange for a smile. Today’s liberals have been flattered into a competitive masochism, rewarding themselves and each other for soft self-flagellation. Their operations of political and social thuggery would have been obvious to anyone who’d ever looked for a job, met a payroll, got shaken down by the mob—in or out of office—been stiffed in a contract, and so on. Anyone, in short, who had ever
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