Ann Coulter on the 'Liberal Mob' of the American Left

New York Times bestselling author and conservative political commentator Ann Coulter's new book, "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America", tackles politics once again, this time taking on the liberal left and what she describes as their "mob behavior."

The Democratic Party is the party of the mob, irrespective of what the mob represents. Democrats activate mobs, depend on mobs, coddle mobs, publicize and celebrate mobs -- they are the mob. Indeed, the very idea of a "community organizer" is to stir up a mob for some political purpose. "As so frequently happens when a crowd goes wild," historian Eric Durschmied says, "there is always one who shouts louder and thereby appoints himself as their leader."1 Those are the people we call "elected Democrats."

Although the left in America is widely recognized as hysterical, unreasonable, and clueless, the "root cause" of these traits has generally been neglected. More than a century ago, Gustave Le Bon perfectly captured the liberal psychological profile in his 1896 book, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind." Le Bon -- a French physician, scientist, and social psychologist -- was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. His groundbreaking book "The Crowd" paints a disturbing picture of the behavior of mobs. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used his book to learn how to incite a mob. Our liberals could have been Le Bon's study subjects.

Even the left-wing Guardian has admitted that Le Bon's study of crowd behavior was "possibly the most influential work of psychology ever written...

"Many of liberals' peculiarities are understandable only when one realizes that they are a mob. For example, a crowd's ability to grasp only the simplest ideas is reflected in the interminable slogans

"Liberals have boatloads of them: Bush Lied, Kids Died! Our Bodies, Our Selves! No Blood for Oil! No Justice, No Peace! Save the Whales; Love Your Mother (Earth); Ban the Bomb; Make Love, Not War; Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican; Diversity Is Our Strength! Save the Planet! Pro-Choice, Pro-Child! Support Our Troops, Bring them Home! Co-Exist! Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? Dissent Is Patriotic! War Is Not the Answer! Go Green! Healthcare Is a Right, Not a Privilege! Imagine Peace; Celebrate Diversity! Beat the Bushes for Peace! No Nukes! Give Peace a Chance; Think Globally/Act Locally; No Tax Cuts for the Rich; Save the Planet! Venceremos! One, Two, Three, Four, We Don't Want Your F--King War! Bush = Hitler; Hell No, We Won't Go! Off the Pig! Eat the Rich! Die Yuppie Scum! Peace Now! We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For! Solidarity Forever! Bring America Home! You Can't Hug a Child with Nuclear Arms; Meat Is Murder! Books Not Bombs! Fight the Power! Yes We Can!

Liberals love slogans because the "laws of logic have no action on crowds." Mobs, Le Bon says, "are not to be influenced by reasoning, and can only comprehend rough-and-ready associations of ideas." He could be describing the New York Times and other journals of elite opinion when he describes periodicals that "manufacture opinions for their readers and supply them with ready- made phrases which dispense them of the trouble of reasoning."

You will see all the techniques for inspiring mobs in liberal behavior.

There are three main elements to putting an idea in a crowd: affirmation, repetition, and contagion. The effects takes time, Le Bon says, but "once produced are very lasting." It's the same reason annoying TV commercials are so effective. "Head On! Apply directly to the forehead. Head On! Apply directly to the forehead. Head On! Apply directly to the forehead."

Affirmation is the creation of a slogan, free of all reasoning and all proof." Indeed, the "conciser an affirmation is, the more destitute of every appearance of proof and demonstration," he says, "the more weight it carries." This is "one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds."

Affirmation only works if it is "constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same terms." The power of repetition "is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives or our actions are forged. At the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it."

Short slogans endlessly repeated create a "current of opinion" allowing "the powerful mechanism of contagion" to operate. Ideas spread through the crowd as easily as microbes, Le Bon says, which explains the mass panics common to rock concerts, financial markets, street protests, and Dennis Kucinich rallies. "A panic that has seized only a few sheep," he observes, "will soon extend to the whole flock."

Liberals have it down to an art: The cacophonous method of yelling until conservatives shut up just because they just want to go home, the purblind assertions -- No WMDs in Iraq! Civilian Deaths! Violence at Tea Parties! Head On! Apply directly to the forehead! -- and overnight the entire mass of liberals is robotically repeating the same slogans.

It isn't only in their incessant street demonstrations that liberals talk in slogans. This is how liberals discuss serious policy matters with the public. It's as if they're speaking to a vast O.J. Simpson jury, mesmerized by a pair of gloves and a closing argument that rhymes ("If it doesn't fit, you must acquit").

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