The American left today is a complex network of conspiracy theorists.

For example, there are the “Truthers” – people who believe that George W. Bush set up 9/11.  There are also “Triggers” – those who believe that Sarah, not Bristol, Palin begat little Trig.   There are many others – check ’em out.

The latest addition:  “Grovers”.  The “Grover” believes that the wheels of the GOP are being spun by Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Freedom.

In a move that should prompt deja vu on the part of Minnesotans who pay attnetion (admittedly mostly conservatives),

Brian Rosenberg is the president of Macalester College in Saint Paul.  The place makes fewer bones that most post-secondary schools about the fact that its mission is to train “progressives”; according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, it’s got the “progressive”-friendly, anti-dissent speech code to match (FIRE gave Mac a “Red” rating for atrocious commitment to free speech).

And if you’re a parent who’s spending, or pondering spending, over $100,000 to send a kid to Mac, you might want to read Rosenberg’s Strib op-ed, and ask yourself “is this the level of commitment to intellectual honesty, to say nothing of rigor, that my kid can expect at Mac?”

Because Rosenberg exhibits the great trifecta of modern “progressive” “thought”in an op-ed in yesterdays’ Strib:

• Crushing  Illogic: we’ll see plenty of that below.
• The exploitation of ignorance.
• The belief that government is our society’s most important enterprise

These lead liberals to some bizarre conclusions.

He’s got a thesis = and if you follow Minnesota politics, it’ll all sound very familiar:

The most powerful figure in today’s Republican Party is not John Boehner or Mitch McConnell. It is not Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. It is not even Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin.

It is, of course, Grover Norquist, the man with The Pledge.

Sound familiar, Minnesotans?  It’s like David Strom and the Taxpayers League’s “No New Taxes” pledge .

Norquist, who has never held elected office…

Isn’t it funny how liberals toss that out when it suits them?

Martin Luther King never held elective office.  Either did Keith Olbermann, James Carville or Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, and each of them is every bit as involved in setting policy as is Norquist is – where “involvement” means “using their God-given right to tell legislators what they expect of them”.

Remember my first point?  Crushing Illogic?   Rosenberg indulges in the strawman first:

…is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, a group whose pledge not to raise taxes under any circumstances has now been signed by hundreds of Republican candidates and officials at both state and national levels.

And they do mean “any circumstances.” Enormous budget deficits? No. A country at war? Nope. Famine and plague? Sorry.

It’s not just a strawman, it’s a dumb one.  We’re at war – but it’s not a war for our very existence, like World War 2 or the Civil War.  And we’re not suffering famine.

Indeed, our country’s only plague is government that regards spending as a greater “right” than the peoples’ right to keep the money they earn.  That’s the plague that Norquist is trying to  address.

If the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, get back to us.

Our grandmothers kidnapped and threatened with death until and unless we raise taxes, as Norquist was asked recently by Stephen Colbert? Well, answered the unflappable Norquist, we always have our memories and our photographs.

(Colbert was being characteristically satiric. There appeared to be nothing satiric about the response.)

There’s point two, “playing on ignorance”.  A shocking number of self-described liberals believe that “The Daily Show” is a news show; it’s not a stretch to think they think the same of Colbert.

Norquist isn’t one of them.

I want to set aside for now the political and economic wisdom of raising or not raising taxes and focus instead on an even more fundamental question: How prudent is it to take an irrevocable pledge about how to govern before one begins the actual work of governing?

Again with the strawman.

If pledges were “irrevocable”, then Alcoholics Anonymous could make Step One “I pledge to quit drinking”, and dispense with steps two through twelve.

The politicians aren’t making the pledge to Grover Norquist.  They are making it to the voters.

Just as George H. W. Bush did, famously pledging “Read my lips!  No new taxes!”.  He broke the pledge.  It helped cost him the 1992 election.

Conservatives remember this.

How wise is it to remove from the legislative toolbox one of the most important tools before one knows what particular challenges one will face?

The “toolbox” is a dumb analogy.  Taxation isn’t government’s tool.  It’s government saying “I’m going to take your tool”.

A better analogy?  The credit card. It can be an important and useful tool in running a home – unless the homeowner starts believing it’s the credit card company’s obligation to support her spending no matter what.

Credit card companies don’t do that.  Why should we?

Up next?  Rosenberg shows – for those who might have doubted it – that he’s from Planet Academia:

How many employers in any industry would hire someone into a leadership position who declared, prior to beginning work, that he or she would under no circumstances employ a commonly used strategy or compromise with those with whom he or she disagreed?

Would a retailer hire a manager who asserted that he would never under any circumstances raise prices?

Would a manufacturer hire a vice president who insisted that under no conditions would layoffs be permissible?

No, no and no – but all of those analogies are wrong.

Nobody would hire a leader who promised to run the business according to a spending target.  And that’s exactly what the “progressives” have done to the state and federal government; make spending the measure of “good government”.

It’s why the DFL scolds us every year about “budget deficits” that are, in fact, based on nothing but bureaucratic spending targets; it’s the same at the national level, only moreso.

Even the most basic primers on leadership note that the ability to listen, the ability to learn and the willingness to compromise are among the essential characteristics of any successful leader.

True.  But Rosenberg missed the most important lesson in those “primers”; a leader leads people toward a goal.

Oh, liberals get it when it’s their goals – desired outcomes for their constituents, and above all that government itself remain fat and happy – and their leaders.

Norquist is asking that the main goal for would-be leaders that seek conservative votes,  at at a time when the greatest scourge facing our nation is an inability to continue long-term government entitlement spending, be to stop spending so much.

It’s a worthy goal.

Because conservatives don’t believe that keeping government fat and happy is the main goal of life – or, for that matter, of government.

Which brings us to the bizarre conclusion:

Many of these newcomers to public office appear also to believe that the mere fact of being elected constitutes a “mandate” for how they should subsequently act — as if the business of governing ended rather than began with being chosen for office.

That would make sense if we elected people to be bureaucrats – to follow pre-set, tested procedures to do a job whose parameters everyone already agrees on.

We don’t agree on those parameters, though.  Which is why we have elections – as an alternative to fighting a civil war over how that job is supposed to be done.

This is a new, peculiar, and destructive way to think about representative government. It ultimately would lead to the elimination of representative government altogether and, instead, to public ballot initiatives on every issue large and small. And we know how well that is working in California.

If Rosenberg were an undergrad writing an English or history paper, and he used such a broad, unsupported conclusion for his thesis, a teacher worthy of them name would knock him down a couple of letter grades and send it back for a rewrite.

Minnesota was once a place known for the exceptional ability of its leaders to place the common good above polarizing ideology.

No.  Minnesota was once a one-party state.  It had two “parties”, of course – but intellectually, there really was only one party.

Life changes.  Wear a helmet, Rosenberg.

Americans for Tax Reform asks every candidate for elected office on the state or federal level to make a written commitment to their constituents to “oppose and vote against all tax increases.”

Every member of Congress, upon taking office, is asked to swear an oath to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”

Here is my simple question: Which “pledge” takes precedence?

That Rosenberg thinks “making government live within its means” is not “part of the duties of the office” shows us where part of Minneosta’s problem is.