Via the National Review, we can see that Republicans and Democrats lead very different lives:

The Roman moralist Plutarch wrote a number of parallel lives of illustrious Greek and Roman notables to offer his Greek-reading audience ethical lessons about character, virtue, and culture. He was trying to teach his fellow Roman citizens the importance of ethics, and to remind them that their own ancestors were often as illustrious as the great Greeks of the past.

Let us try to use his example to learn something about modern morality from the contrasts within a few matched pairs of contemporary notables, prominent in the recent news.

Already, we can see that conservatives are going to come off looking superior. Conservatives, being Traditional Values Americans, care about their family tree, and want it to remain beautiful; liberals, being greedy little brats that fornicate at every opportunity, are going to have a much messier tree; it will be covered in kudzu, and the branches will be immistakable from vines. Conservatives realize that some cultures, characters, and virtues are superior to others; liberals think that wannabe gangsters performing drive-bys with water guns deserve just as much respect as the diligent conservative that spends hours reading Burke, who then apply his principles to their everyday lives. Liberals love criminals, they love pedophiles and other sexual deviants, and they also seem to hate the fundamentals of our economy.

The article goes on to expose the evils of Democrats, and why they are the ones responsible for our economy’s condition. Yet the media, with its intense hatred for Republicans, somehow manages to blame every possible tragedy on them! Why should Richard Fuld, who only wanted to increase his salary to $45 million (thanks to his adept handling of the mortgage crisis), be persecuted, while Robert Rubin gets to be B Hussein’s economic adviser after his disastorous showing at Citigroup, while the noble GOP and the semi-noble Democratic Leadership Council tried to stop him from wrecking the economy? Why should Ted Stevens be persecuted for making a minor alliance with a minor oil company, while Charles Rangel, a well-known racist and Bush-basher, gets to have oil companies contribute to his public city college? Why should Alberto Gonzales, who merely wanted to fire attorneys for not submitting to conservatism, be persecuted, while Eric Holder gets to be Attorney General for not inquiring about the pardon of convicted fugitive Marc Rich? Why should Trent Lott, who didn’t really do much of anything at all, be persecuted, while Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, gets to escape from his crime of managing Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac?

The reality is that the media, ranging from MSNBC, to CNN, to NBC News, to CBS News, to ABC News, to the Washington Post, to the New York Times, actively worked to sabotage Republicans, especially conservatives, while also actively working to further the far-left Democrat agenda. Why have we not been hearing the stories of the bad Democrats in the MSM, yet have been hearing stories of the bad Republicans?

Although none of these Republicans did anything particularly bad, we support executing those that fall out of line, such as Larry Craig. Democrats, on the other hand, actively work to undermine this country. As we have seen, this economic crisis is to blame on the Democrats and the RINOs who capitulated to Democrats, not the innocent and heroic Republicans that attempted to stop these lasviciously lunatic liberals from wrecking our country. The Democrats of the past screwed this nation up so much that not even the Republicans, with their free market principles, could stop them.

I think that Victor Davis Hanson, in his concluding paragraph, concludes this quite nicely:

I could go on and on with these Plutarachean examples of Parallel Lives but you get the picture. Here, the contrast is not the respective virtues of Greece and Rome. Nor is there any regret whatsoever that liberals of good faith thankfully scrutinize the bad judgment and even criminal activity of wayward conservatives. The problem instead is why we continuously consider liberal transgressions as misdemeanors and their conservative counterparts as felonies.

If Plutarch once believed that action, not intention matters (otherwise, as Aristotle noted, we could all be moral in our sleep), we moderns believe the reverse — that proper thinking can often excuse improper acts.

Why so? Perhaps we suspect that a Rubin or Dodd want to do more good things for the poor than do a Fuld or Lott, and so we should interpret their transgressions as atypical lapses rather than characteristic behavior.

Perhaps we think an Attorney-General designate Holder is properly cognizant of our long liberal efforts to force the system to change and therefore deserves some exemption for ethical blindness on the job. Again in contrast, Attorney-General emeritus Gonzales is unduly cynical in not appreciating that progressive thinking is responsible for his job, and therefore he must be held accountable immediately and for the rest of his professional life for supposed character flaws.

Perhaps we think a life-long crusading African-American like Rangel merely fudges a bit here and there in the twilight of a long exemplary career seeking to ensure racial harmony and parity for his nation, and therefore is absent-minded rather than felonious and hypocritical. Yet the sordid behavior of his white male conservative counterparts provides valuable elucidation about their depravity and bigotry — and is proper grounds for their eventual departures not merely from posts of influence, but from the Congress altogether.

Perhaps — as we saw from the asymmetrical media treatment of the two candidates during the recent campaign — in matters of power and politics today, intention, symbolism, and rhetoric are everything; facts essentially nothing.

Or maybe less cynically — in the minds of self-appointed liberal moralists concerned about the greater good — exalted ends at times necessarily entail regrettable means.

In the meantime, please donateto the National Review, so that they can continue to provide a voice of Reason in these dangerous times. They had to fire RINO Christopher Buckley, son of the founder. While budget cuts like this are helpful, they can’t really fire anyone else other than Kathleen Parker! Please donate!