The American Spectator

WASHINGTON — For weeks now civilized observers around the world have been astonished by the dispendious angers vented by indignant young Muslims. These young indignados have listened to the counsel of their venerable leaders in government and in the mosques. They have noted the intolerable provocations of the unbelievers. Finally, they have taken to the streets and city squares to burn flags, bash passersby, rush the cops, and — from what I have observed on the TV news — take a swing or two at each other. Their righteous anger could be contained only so long.

Taking it all in, I can only wonder: How long will it be before such scenes erupt in the streets and squares of America? Listening to their indignant leaders, witnessing the daily provocations within our society, how long will it be before this country’s young Democrats give themselves over to the fiery passions that their own mullahs are stoking? America’s Angry Left, as it is called, can only take so much. Then, vavoom! Our Angry Left’s own indignados will be out on the street, haranguing the Republican Congress, chanting anti-Halliburton jingles, and burning three-piece suits. Wal-Marts will be stormed. Former vice president Al Gore will be called back from Saudi Arabia to mollify the masses.

Doubtless you heard about his oratory at the celebrated Jiddah Economic Forum. There he told the assembled sheiks and mullahs, gentlemen and ladi…well, there were no ladies. At any rate al-Gore told the assembled that the Bush Administration has been committing “terrible abuses and it’s wrong.” The abuses, according to the former vice president, involved Arabs who after 9/11 have been “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa…and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.”

Gore is bidding fair to become the Muqtada al-Sadr of America’s Angry Left. Savor his recent vituperations. He has called our suave president a “moral coward” who is in alliance with “digital brown shirts.” He refers to Abu Ghraib prison as “the Bush Gulag”; and, forgetting the discrepancies of his former boss, he calls President George W. Bush “the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.”

Of course, Gore is not without competition among the party’s elders. Dr. Howard Dean’s rage is ceaseless. Just the other day he apprised CNN that “This is probably the most corrupt administration we’ve had since maybe ever and certainly since Harding, I would guess.” Former President Jimmy Carter is angrier still. He could not even stifle his anger during the funeral of Coretta Scott King — and with President Bush accompanied by his father sitting nearby.

There Carter suggested that it was racial prejudice that accounted for the slow governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. Alluding to the present controversy over the Bush Administration’s NSA wiretapping of suspected terrorists, he lamented the long-ago federal surveillance of the Kings. Predictably, he was careful not to mention that that surveillance was perpetrated by Democrats. In recalling his dedication of a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. back in 1974, Carter was also careful not to mention that early in his political career he had courted the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. Instead he recalled that outside the building during those dedication rites there were “chanting members of the Ku Klux Klan, who had too much support from other Americans.” Well maybe, but the hooded morons’ support had declined sufficiently for you, Mr. Carter, to look elsewhere for votes.

Yes, with all this moral indignation pouring forth from the Democratic elders, how long will it be before their listeners take to the streets? Already the Internet resounds with the young furiosos’ enraged responses. Can it be long before they march? And when they do they will be more dangerous than any Arab street demonstration, for America’s Angry Left includes its womenfolk. Boy, are they angry. Possibly when the mullahs and potentates of Araby see the incomparable wrathfulness of America’s left-wing women, they will revise their thinking on male-only street demonstrations. Tantrums thrown by women can be very persuasive.