I had a couple of other column ideas for this week, but I came across a column in Friday’s Yale Daily News by a Yale senior named Elizabeth Moore (entitled “You made a big mistake, America”), which, in the context of the mostly feel-good nature of American politics last week, was too astonishing to ignore.

It’s not that she doesn’t have the right to say and believe what she wants; she certainly does. It’s just that if what she says is completely ridiculous, we all (Democrats and Republicans) have the right to point and laugh at it.

I’m no political columnist, but below are excerpts of the column with some comments interjected.

“Thank you, America, for making the biggest mistake of your life.”

Even John McCain would be appalled by this statement. Did Ms. Moore even bother watching his concession speech on Tuesday night? In case she missed it:

“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating [Barack Obama], but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

Ms. Moore, do you really think John McCain would condone your calling President-Elect Obama a “mistake”?

“Thank you, America, for electing a man who has known associations with domestic terrorists and dissenting radicals who make their careers out of defacing the United States and promoting its ruin. Thank you, America, for electing a man who is wildly acclaimed by the governments of our country’s worst enemies, by Iran’s death-crazed Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s drug-lord-promoting Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s torturing-socialist Castro Brothers.”

Are we really going to continue hearing about these “associations” over the next four years? How exactly does that fit into Ms. Moore’s definition of “patriotic”? I’ll let John McCain help me out here again:

“Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.”

“Thank you, America, for electing a man so far from the foundations and roots of our government, so beyond the principles as guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights, so disrespectful of the glories and honor of the past that his main philosophies take active steps towards the very foundational principles that led to the death of millions during China’s Cultural Revolution and Russia’s Great Purges.”

Wow. Really? So, raising some taxes on the rich and giving the middle-class some extra money to work with is akin to killing millions of people? Going a bit far, are we?

“Thank you, America, for failing to do the right thing. You passed over the greatness of a man who stared death in its sallow face for over 2,000 days, in the wake of torture by the enemy as motivated by pure, unadulterated evil, for a man in favor of the promotion of the very same evil. You neglected the fortitude of a man brave enough to better himself in the name of service to his country. You obliterated the necessity of a man with a heart understanding of sacrifice, hard work, and perseverance for a man who defines patriotism by a willingness to remain stoic and submissive as the greedy, controlling claws of government pry hard-earned resources out of dying hands who have nothing but God to cling to, when even He has been taken away and destroyed.”

Barack Obama is in favor of “pure unadulterated evil”? Well, then over 65 million people must have missed something over the last two years. John McCain, too:

“I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

“We have been ushered into a time where the selfish, the entitled, the lazy, the weak and the cowardly are idolized and rewarded. Gone are the golden Horatio Alger stories that promoted the motivation to work towards the American dream. Here are the depressing realities of entitlement and selfishness that encourage the passivity to wait for the free checks to be deposited in fat, uncalloused hands.”

Deep down, any respectable Obama opponent knows that he is not a socialist and that all he has proposed is a change in tax policy. So, where exactly are these “free checks” coming from? And where can I get my “fat, uncalloused hands” on mine?

“It is a time for us to more fervently cement our commitments to the foundational principles of this great country, based on the Constitution’s blessings of liberty. It is a time for us to become even more aware of the honor and dignity the masses have failed to internalize and we must fight to preserve. It is a time for us to create our own revolution of the traditions that have never failed us until now, when they have been so blatantly ignored by the freedom-hating masses who seek to destroy the rights to self defense, to the free practice of religion, to the rightful ownership of property and, most seriously, to the autonomous control of oneself.”

So, we, the “masses” have no “honor” and no “dignity”? That’s mature.

I’ve got no problem with dissent. But inane ramblings don’t help anything.

Want to disagree with Barack Obama’s policies? OK. Want to get conservatives fired up for the midterm elections so that the politicians you support regain some seats in Congress? Fine. But blindly criticizing the new government isn’t worthy of a major political party.

Even John McCain would agree with that.

Eric Finkelstein ’06 is a former Sun managing editor and a third year student in the Law School. He can be reached at efinkelstein@cornellsun.com. Saturdays Excepted appears alternate Mondays.