The philosophy of 3-year-olds.

Victor Davis Hanson writes of the new calls for “unity” from the Left:

I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry [at the inauguration] that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in their lives they are apparently proud of the United States. (Had we not had the financial meltdown in mid-September, and had Obama stayed three points back in the polls, would millions have stayed soured on America and now in sullen silence licked their wounds?).

So I am surprised that suddenly the election of a single individual means that we are united, patriotic, proud of America? Suddenly Okinawa or Antietam, or all those who died at the Argonne, are ours to claim again? (This reminds of elementary school, when our third-grade split up into two sides, as the teacher quizzed us on geography–and the losers of the contest cried and said unfair and how they didn’t like school or Mrs. Wilson, and then when they won the next day, how suddenly third grade became glorious, and Mrs. Wilson and her games were once again wonderful).

But America was always ours, the public, and the nation transcends the proposition of whether Obama gets elected or not—given that the United States, in its worst hour, was better than the alternatives at their best. So I think it would be wise to cool it on the “I am now proud of America” rhetoric. If getting your way means suddenly the dead at Iwo or those who were blown up in B-17s over Germany are at last your own and matter, then we are in deep trouble.

From pre-staging complaints of voter fraud in advance of the election in case they lost, to “finding” new votes in every recount, to complaining that this country was not a democracy under George Bush’s leadership, the Left simply refuses to accept that people can disagree with them in good faith or that a Democrat can lose a fair election.

Hanson says third-graders, I say 3-year-olds.  My wife and I let our daughter “win” virtually every competition with us, whether a footrace, board game, guessing game, whatever.  Until she was about 3 or 4, when I started to get nervous that we were waiting too long to teach her that she can lose, too.  She’s seven years old now, still in first grade, and she learned that lesson a long time ago.  Why hasn’t the Left?