I don’t know what’s funnier. This speech by Daniel Ellsberg given a few days ago at American University or the gushing reaction to the idiocy by some of the netnuts.

Ellsberg you may recall, leaked the Pentagon Papers back in the day when such things were actually taken seriously. While it seems pretty clear that national security was not severely damaged by the publishing of the history of our involvement in Southeast Asia, the docs were considered “classified” and Ellsberg took it upon himself to remove that designation.

Since then, Ellsberg has flitted from one radical conclave to another, apparently making a living basically by being a gadfly. Hardly anyone listens to his off the wall diatribes against American policy and the American government – except like minded fools who see Ellsberg as some kind of hero.

How anyone can take this loony bird seriously after he says something like this is beyond understanding:

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.

Paranoid blather.

Detention camps? 9/11 trutherism? I know that the Nixon thugs broke into this guy’s psychiatrist’s office. I wonder what they found?

Besides that, Ellsberg evidently does his best thinking while unconscious:

Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

Two coups in less than 8 years? Whatever sleeping pill Ellsberg is taking, gimme some. Those kind of delusions are more entertaining than most of my dreams which usually involve my boss, Editor in Chief of AT Tom Lifson, my cats, and very large bowl of double chocolate fudge ice cream.

This kind of exaggerated, ridiculous, outrageous thinking should get Mr. Ellsberg right back up on top of the radical lefty pyramid. I have no doubt he will be even more in demand now that he’s joined the ranks of the truly unhinged.

For three years I have been writing about this kind of hysterical, over the top, insanely exaggerated rhetoric. Why? Why do liberals feel it necessary to throw reality out the window and paint a picture of the government, of Bush, of Republicans, of the United States in such dark, apocalyptic terms?

I know the far right offers similar rhetoric about the government – even goofier if that’s possible. But most of them are inbred crackers, militia freaks, racist skin heads, and Hitler worshippers. These liberals are supposed to be educated, urbane, rational people. What causes such unhinged rhetoric to spew from their lips on a regular basis?

I am not insensate to some of the excesses of the Administration’s anti-terror efforts. Nor do I trust Bush/Cheney farther than I can throw them when it comes to some civil liberties issues. But I also consider myself educated, urbane, and rational and I don’t see the Constitution being torn up or some kind of evil trend toward unlimited executive authority. Nor do I see anything except the usual corruption that power brings when it comes to the GOP in Congress. These same kind of excesses plagued the Democrats in the latter years of their control of Congress. It is the nature of our system that power will corrupt some people. And whether they have a “D” or an “R” after their name doesn’t matter in the long run.

My working theory on why liberals say the things they do is that when they eventually triumph, they can claim to have saved the country from absolute disaster. It may surprise you to know that this has happened several times in our history. What won’t surprise you is that Democrats have been the ones claiming to rescue the rest of us from tyranny.

The most glaring example was the election of 1800 where Jefferson’s “democratic republicans” swept into power, throwing the Federalists out. Their entire campaign was based on hysteria, exaggerated hyperbolic rhetoric, and predictions of doom; that electing the Federalists would mean that the country would degenerate into a monarchy with a full blown aristocracy plus dominance by Great Britain to boot.

President Adams was livid with Jefferson – especially after newspapers in Jefferson’s corner printed slanderous stories about Adams and his plans to make himself king, closely ally the country with England, and set up his friends as dukes and earls to rule over the populace. The campaign was so bitter that the two founders didn’t speak or communicate for 15 years. When they finally sealed the breach in their friendship, the letters they exchanged the last years of their lives left a remarkable record of the thoughts of two great Americans on life, liberty, and the nature of man.

But this isn’t 1800. And the effect of this kind of rhetorical nonsense not only makes public discourse impossible but truly endangers the republic. The vast majority of Americans don’t believe this idiocy either. All it does is turn them off to politics further as the level of political argument descends further and further into the gutter.

The Democrats may very well sweep the elections next year. But the question is; just what kind of country will they have won? Their contribution to the terrible apathy and disenchantment with government comes at a time when we should be uniting against a common, deadly enemy. Instead, the left will ascend to power and stand atop the hill and survey a charred political wasteland, made worse by their unhinged opposition to the policies of the administration and their end of the world rhetoric directed against the GOP.

There is responsible opposition to your political foes. There is even irresponsible opposition that has long been part of the American political scene. But the opposition shown by the left over the last few years is beyond irresponsible. It is destructive. And for that, they should be royally ashamed of themselves.