Corner-jump the shark

Roger Clegg, The Corner, National Review Online, April 13, 2006:

Frequently liberals will argue to us, "If you were truly conservative, you would" (fill in the blank: oppose tax cuts since they unbalance the budget, oppose reform of this or that entitlement program because doing so is too "radical," oppose this or that foreign intervention, oppose the Patriot Act because it fosters Big Government, support gay rights against an intrusive government, etc.). Now, my point here is not to discuss whether or not there is anything to such claims; usually there is not. Rather, it seems to me interesting that liberals use this ploy against conservatives, but conservatives rarely use it against liberals. Why is this so?

A liberal response might be that conservatives are much more inconsistent and hypocritical than liberals, but I don't buy that. A more plausible explanation is that liberalism today is so incoherent and lacking in true principles that it is impossible to say that any position is inconsistent with it. It's more evidence, in other words, that all the intellectual rigor is on the Right. [emphasis Geekable's]

A couple of readers to this effect: "Aren't you a bit embarrassed to be laying in to illegal immigrants, having confessed that you yourself were once an illegal immigrant?"

No. I look on it as being sort of like the reformed drunk at a temperance meeting.

Besides, there's INSIDE and OUTSIDE. I can recall thinking, as an [illegal immigrant], that Americans were kind of naive about immigration. Since the naivety was to my personal advantage, I didn't complain. AS AN AMERICAN, and having jumped through all the darn immigration hoops at last (seven years to Green Card, nine more to citizenship), I'm entitled to another point of view...