Well, it has finally happened. Barack Obama has done what Democratic candidates for president invariably do – he has revealed the profound sense of unearned superiority that is the sad and persistent hallmark of contemporary liberalism. Obama’s statement today that small-town folk “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” may be the most distilled example of this train of thought I’ve ever seen. Obama’s astonishing sentence offers a syllogistic string of superciliousness: Gun ownership is equated with religious fanaticism, which is said to accompany hatred of the other in the form of opposition to immigration and support for trade barriers. It drips with an attitude so important to the spiritual well-being of the American liberal – the paternalistic attitude that says, “Oh, well, people only do thing differently from me because they are ignorant and superstitious and backward” – that it has survived and thrived despite the suicidal impact it has had on the achievement of liberal political goals and aims.