The force that a people needs to keep all others in subjection is today, more than ever, a privilege that cannot last. The nation that aimed at such an empire would place itself in a more dangerous position than the weakest of tribes. It would become the object of universal horror. Every opinion, every desire, every hatred, would threaten it, and sooner or later those hatreds, those opinions, and those desires would explode and engulf it.

There would certainly be something unjust in turning such fury against an entire people. An entire country is never guilty of the excesses that its leader makes it commit. ... But the nations that are the victims of its deplorable obedience, will not be prepared to acknowledge its secret feelings, feelings that its conduct belies. They will reproach the instruments for the crimes of the hand that directs them.

-- The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1813)

The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh.

I lurched away. “This is not what I meant,” I stammered. The whole thing had suddenly taken on the quality of a bad horror film. The floor spun. By now my back was against the sink, which was as far away as I could get. He moved toward me. I turned away from him toward the sink and found myself vomiting.

I find the very last part of that story hard to credit, unless there was a lot more booze involved than she's letting on.

Then again, hmm. Maybe she's on the level.

I don't think I'm suggesting sexual harassment is no big deal if I say it's really not very iron-jawed-angel for Ms. Wolf to be typing breathlessly about this incident twenty years after the fact. But it probably is pretty tasteless for me to recount the first thing I thought when I read this story: there should be a Page Six or an US Weekly aimed at the pseudointellectual class, recounting the pecadillos of academics, jurists, authors, and suchlike creatures. I'd read it daily.

But in the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never get over it. The implication is also that women are naive, and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.

The larger implications are for the movement that used to be called"feminism." Twenty years of fame, money, success, happy marriage and the children she has described in her books -- and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation's leading feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated victimhood? It's not an ideology I'd want younger women to follow.

Twenty years on, I am handing over a secret to its rightful owner. I can’t bear to carry it around anymore.

and

I am not at peace when the sun sets and the Book of Life is sealed: I always see that soft spot of complicity.

Then I don't suppose I can argue him into it. To me it sounds like she's about to reveal her participation in a secret government experiment in biowarfare, rather than confess her refusal to publicly reveal the fact that a boorish professor put his hand on her thigh. As for"twit," well, that's another value judgment that doesn't seem worth the effort to justify. But I do apologize for having offended him. As it happens, I agree with his general point that an Ann-Coulterish desire to offend for the sake of giving offense is immature (for instance, I think those"affirmative action bake sales" are in rotten taste). But I thought I was well short of that line here.

Of course, he's not alone. The"do as we say, not as we do" credo seems to be pretty common among leftist labor activist groups.

Even more disappointing, I learned after I wrote the Nader piece that Craig Rucker and C-FACT -- the conservative group that's been mounting legal challenges against the PIRGS all over the country -- themselves resorted to the same kind of funding scams they built a reputation criticizing the PIRGS for.

I'm no conservative, but there is nothing conservative about the activist methods that this President has used to enact his interventionist agenda.

So why is he being released? Because he's a Danish citizen. And Denmark gave 500 troops and $350 million to the Iraq war effort.

Juan Non-Volokh predicts that William Pryor will be a"splendid judge" because of his ability to"seperate his personal ideological views from his legal obligations." As a resident of Pryor's state who has had a chance to observe him in his capacity as attorney general, I have a somewhat different perspective.

A stronger argument can be made for the view that his actions were politically calculated. A case in point was his highly visible, but rarely mentioned by conservatives, support of the massive (recently defeated) tax increase in Alabama. Did he take this action because of a sincere belief that Alabama needs higher taxes or to keep Governor Riley on his side during the confirmation process. Certainly, the tax increase was not something that a true critic of big government would support but it was (from the standpoint of getting a federal appointment) politically wise.

As to the Moore case, it is certainly true that if Pryor had acted otherwise, his chances of federal judgeship were gone for good. Was his action an example of showing respect for judicial precedent and legal procedure or instead one of political calculation? I suspect that it was a bit of both. In neither case, however, does the term"splendid judge" automatically come to mind.

Ralph Luker calls my attention to the fact that Thomas C. Reeves will now have his own blog at HNN. That's a real catch. Reeves has written fine fine biographies of Joseph McCarthy and John F. Kennedy.