"Ann Althouse pushes back, and she has a point. But watch a few episodes of 16 and Pregnant..."

"... and you might think that 'it’s wrong' is a useful heuristic for people incapable of fully understanding what 'it will be hard' actually means."

Writes Instapundit, pushing back to my pushback on the "Dan Quayle Was Right" article.

Let's take a closer look at this "useful heuristic" concept, which expresses something truly profound about the role of traditional religion and other conservative philosophies in society. Look at what is being admitted. There are a whole lot of people who are insufficiently smart, competent, and emotionally stable to make a decision involving a complex set of factors, so we need to dominate their minds with a starker structure of "right" and "wrong," even where those of us who are really smart and able to process complex factors know it's not really a matter of right and wrong. 

Instapundit continues:

At any rate, after twenty years of hearing SUV drivers described in terms more applicable to Himmler, the 1992 condemnations of moralistic language from political leaders ring particularly hollow.

So... because lefties put their arguments in starkly moralistic terms, it's tiresome to hear about the way righties overuse morality talk. I get the point. In fact, what bugs me the most about lefties — what motivates me to go after lefties much more than righties on this blog — is the way they set themselves up as the good people and prance and stomp all over the place shaming and blaming the people who won't agree with them. Having lived in Madison for the last quarter century, I am fed up with their domineering bullshit. The reason my blog appears to skew conservative — when I am a political moderate — is that I am not surrounded by pious, overbearing right-wingers sneering at me and gasping about what a bad person I am.

BUT: I am not saying that domineering bullshit from righties is okay because lefties do it too or do it more or do it nearer to me. I don't like it.