Liberals cannot because their ideology leaves them unprepared to find fault with The People.

No, liberals cannot because they've been suckered into believing the entire edifice of "conventional wisdom" as dictated by The New York Times and CNN.

For generations now we have deliberately chosen to educate ourselves and our children according to the least confrontational standards — which have, not coincidentally, also turned out to be extremely uninformative if not simply egregiously misleading.

And as much as we complain about it, we continue to marinade quite happily in the circular, self-serving discourse of right-wing ideology masquerading as hip, knowing, populist apathy.

Not finding fault with "the people" isn't the issue. Liberals find fault with other people all the time.

What they can't do — yet must — is actually critique themselves.

4 in 10 Americans support annexing Canada: Poll

Updated Mon. Oct. 14 2002 1:01 PM ET

Canadian Press

MONTREAL -- Should Canada become the 51st American state? Four out of 10 Americans answered "sure" in a recent poll conducted by Leger Marketing of Montreal.

While 38 per cent of respondents said they would be "in favour of Canada being annexed to the United States," 49 per cent disagreed. Another 13 per cent said they did not know or refused to answer.

Of course this not particularly stupid given that Canada has the 2nd largest proven oil reserves in the world. But how many Americans would know that?

And don't miss this little gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4iI59BfpQ

As impeachment is, essentially, a legal procedure, it makes sense that it isn't done through popular vote ...

The best characterization of impeachment was from an article here on Salon, now many years past. To paraphrase, impeachment is often mistaken as a legal procedure with political overtones, whereas it's actually a political procedure with legal overtones.

A political procedure. As in, if you don't have the political strength, it's not gonna happen.

The worst Americans can be accused of in terms of impeachment is failing to elect congresspeople who would impeach Bush.

Hear hear. But let's not make light of that accusation — it's actually rather damning.

There is nothing that Democrats did in 2006 that they could not have done in 2004, 2002, or 2000 in order to take and consolidate control of Congress. Had they started earlier than the last 24 months of the Bush regime, it would have been plausible to talk seriously about impeachment.

But that's not what happened, and intead we have meaningless demands for an eleventh hour hail mary impeachment.

Nancy Pelosi should have used a different metaphor: by the time she was Speaker of the House, impeachment had left the building.

A) Impeachment is a legal proceeding. I will readily agree that politics have a much greater influence on its outcome than truth does, but many legal proceedings are largely political. The fact that the practice of impeachment is so corrupted doesn't alter the structure of the proceeding.

B) I cannot think of a single population in the history of humankind that reliably elected good leadership. The Democrats can be faulted for many things (though thinking about impeaching Bush in 2000 would have been a neat trick) but so can all governments and parties. The governments of Europe have many problems and scandals. They may not have sins as great as those of the Bush government, but almost all have sins that measure up to the Democrats' weakness.

The U.S. did not spend over half a trillion dollars on its military every single year, or have the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons armed and ready to go, or have an economy that demands a perpetual state of war to keep the kiddies in their cocoa puffs.

One would think (catch 22) that would be sufficient reason for some sort of basic proficiency requirements for voters.

But then if there were standards to be met, who'd grade the tests?

Shenkman is an academic and so has immediate traction among those who value intellect. Unfortunately, it is ignorance which defines what we actually "know." For instance, the academic Shenkman mistakenly refers to our national structure as "a democracy" when, in fact, we are a Republic, something I'm sure he knows on some level, especially since he harps so sardonically on Hamilton.

The difference between a republic and a democracy is rather similar to the difference between a jury and a lynch mob. In fact, direct democracy, something the current administration has been furiously trying to inflict on the middle east wholesale, is nothing more than a potential lynch mob. The notion that the majority rules seems to imply a corollary that the majority is right. Good and well if, in fact, the majority is right; however, due to the improbability of such a situation obtaining prior to the arrival of the New Age, the marjority is, at best, one hopes, close to right on balance.

We now know, based upon the past seven and one-half years experience, that this is not so. As Shenkman himself points out, the reliance on 20-second sound bites, talking points, slogans, and repeated lies (The Big Lie is what it used to be called) has replaced the nominal informed state of the people.

It's not that the people are ignorant, because, again, ignorance is what defines what we know. It is, rather, the willful stupidity, the plague of our time, as practiced by the people, the people who have been too lazy to think and have been living in an "Oxbow Incident" state of mind for the past 25 years, which has disabled the process to the extent that such a question as the title of the article might even be asked.

We do not require wonkish knowlege of every detail of every policy put forth, nor be proficient in political science, to make informed decisions. What we do need, however, is to be capable of rational, critical thinking. Reason.

It is not only our system of public education which has failed, but the premium we place upon knowlege, reason and critical thinking. If we don't value a thing it soon will not be taught nor even tolerated in polite company.

And therein lies the last nail: the over-polite company of liberals who are unwilling to examine themselves (or the institution of liberalism) has led to the rampant amok behavior of Republicans who have developed the fatal condition known as neoconservatism. Fortunately, the problem (the neocon problem, at least) seems to be burning itself out for lack of fuel. Now, with the rise of an utterly different breed of Democratic candidate, the question strains: can liberalism become self-examining once again? Because if it can and if it does, that New Age may well be within reach, and we would then need not be asking "Are you too dumb to vote?"

Pain is a great teacher. I'm betting on the base motive of freedom from pain to turn the people toward their better nature between now and the first of next year. I'm betting by November we will have proven we are, on balance, smart enough to vote, and, once having proven that, we will like the feel of it enough to begin to think again.

The window is open. Breathe. It's smart.