I’m no fan of Alec Baldwin but firing a guy for swearing at someone after they threaten his family is fucking gay. The paps surrounded his wife and child as they always do so he lost his temper and called one a “cocksucking faggot.” I’m pretty sure it’s legal in Texas to pull out a shotgun when your family is perceived to be in imminent danger. I don’t know about you but I’d rather be accused of blowing someone than have my head blown off. Alas, we live in the Northeast where everyone is expected to act like aristocrats even when they’re being attacked by savages.

The right seized this opportunity to give the left a taste of their own medicine. They pounced on Baldwin and demanded he be hoisted on his own petard. The left complied, claiming, “Alec Baldwin was attacking our families.” I don’t enjoy seeing retards on petards, because I hate petards. It’s fair for conservatives to use this outburst to showcase the left’s hypocrisy, but demanding apologies and insisting people lose their job is everything that’s wrong with the liberal ethos. Ann Coulter agrees. “This was just a curse word” she told Bill Hoffman at Newsmax, “It was like using the f-word and, frankly, a lot of these paparazzi photographers deserve it.” Coulter understands the difference between exposing hypocrisy and participating in it. You don’t demand apologies. You fight back. When the Perpetually Offended crowd demanded she apologize for saying “retard” she said, “screw them.”

Though language policing is a liberal disease the right also talks a lot about how we should talk. When everyone thought Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut, many conservatives were angry at him. “He shouldn’t have stooped to that level” they said, “it cheapens the whole discussion.” Fuck that. She went to a Catholic school and wanted to have sex before marriage. In that context, that’s exactly what she is (and he never even said that). “How you should talk” is the root of political correctness. “Oh, it’s not ‘African American’” they say with their pinky in the air, “It’s ‘person of color’.” Actually, it’s “black” you patronizing prick.

All this talk of keeping a stiff upper lip sounds downright un-American to me. I’m from Canada where centuries of Scotch/Irish culture mean everyone talks like they’re drunk. If a man walks into a bar with a burn on his face, we say, “Holy fuck guy, what happened to your face?” It’s a British trait to pretend nothing’s unusual. Didn’t America kick out the British almost a quarter of a millenium ago? They didn’t do it lining up and taking fire, either. They did it by rolling up their sleeves, jumping out of trees, and fighting dirty. That’s the kind of spirit that made me immigrate here in the first place.

The Democrats are winning the culture war because they’re fighting dirty. Let’s punch them in the fucking face. I’m not saying you come into a debate calling everyone a bunch of cocksuckers but if four professors are smirking and guffawing at your points and calling your references, “fantasy studies,” come back with, “fucking idiot.”

William F Buckley had many great moments but the scene he is most lionized for is the 1968 TV appearance when, after Gore Vidal bitchily called him a Nazi many times, Bill bounced back with, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face, and you’ll stay plastered.” He didn’t demand an apology or insist Vidal be fired. He called him a queer and threatened to knock him out. Can we get back to that please? What’s so great about being civil? It doesn’t work. Many lament the prominence of cutthroat campaigns and attack ads but they’re the best way to get the dirt on both party’s candidates. Brawling is the American way. You can still wear a suit and feel strongly about family values. You can still be a God-fearing, pro-life traditionalist, but stop being so fucking polite to assholes.

We are so worried about treading lightly we’re vulnerable to any miscreant who decides to tread on us. When we catch Bin Laden we dedicate untold resources to ensure he has a proper burial. Even then we’re told it was disrespectful. Authorities at Fort Hood were reluctant to alert authorities to Nidal Hasan’s strange behavior for fear of appearing racist. They should have kicked his ass. And before you get all sanctimonious about soldiers urinating on dead bodies, these bodies had accidentally blown themselves up trying to make road bombs to blow up the very soldiers doing the pissing. I’d like to see how liberals would behave if they discovered the body of their would-be murderer. They want to shit in Palin’s mouth and all she did was say being a slave to debt is like slavery.

The GOP, conservatives, neocons, paleocons, and libertarians had better lose this obsession with being erudite and get dirty. We are not in the era of duels anymore and if you walk ten paces away from your enemy, he will shoot you in the back. This right wing obsession with posh discourse and obeying the rules is also what’s preventing young people from wanting to get involved. It’s alienating to be old-fashioned so let’s get vulgar. Let’s take the low road. If someone thinks that’s rude or racist or stooping to “their” level, tell them to fuck off. Believe me, they’ll stay plastered.