I wrote A Conservative History of the American Left in part to conserve the history the Left would rather discard. With that in mind, I produced for FrontPageMag.com the Top Ten Skeletons in the Left's Closet. From the assassination of three U.S. presidents by communists to leading Democrats fawning over the pre-Jonestown Jim Jones, the list details the history that the American Left wants you to forget.

Boxers' waistbands generally expand as their careers progress. James Toney, for instance, started as a middleweight, fighting in the 160-pound range. He now fights at around 230 pounds. Blame Mother Nature and Father Time, and, in Toney's case, Ronald McDonald too. But also blame Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Franklin. Heavyweights have heavy wallets. Chasing the Benjamins as much as chasing the cheeseburgers contributes to blown-up boxers.

This is why I find Chris Byrd's story so interesting. After fighting as a heavyweight for more than a decade--using quickness and defensive skills to defeat such larger men as Evander Holyfield, Vitali Klitschko, and David Tua--Byrd has reinvented himself as a light heavyweight. The 37-year-old has dropped not one but two weight classes. This evening, on ESPN2, a svelte 175-pound Byrd will make his ironic return to the light-heavyweight division. I will be travelling to a television set and tuning in.

Byrd, who won the silver medal at the 1992 Olympics in the 165-pound weight class, launched his professional career in 1993 in the light heavyweight division. But after two fights he fled to the greener pastures--as in greenbacks--of the heavyweight division. He transformed his body, but he was still a David among Goliaths. But as this Christian Christopher certainly knows, David slew Goliath. But this David didn't always beat the Goliaths. Seeing Byrd get pounded by Wladimir Klitschko two years ago, I wondered why he didn't just fight as a cruiserweight. Byrd was one step ahead of me. Seeing no money fights in the under 200-pound division, Byrd dropped down another division to be in the mix with fellow old guys Roy Jones, Bernard Hopkins, Joe Calzaghe, and Antonio Tarver. There are some interesting match-ups to be made. So after gorging himself for the big bucks, Byrd now starves himself for the big bucks.

Here is Byrd as a heavyweight. Here he is now as a light-heavyweight. Byrd told ESPN, "People look at me now and the first thing they say is, 'Who is that guy?' The next thing they say is, 'How did you lose the weight?'"

UPDATE: After eating like a bird, Chris Byrd was hit like a heavyweight by Shaun George. Withstanding the blows of the likes of Vitali Klitschko, Ike Ibeabuchi, and David Tua, a lethargic Byrd tasted the canvass three times in this fight before referee Jay Nady mercifully ended it.

By the power not vested in them, four judges yesterday pronounced California and gay marriage a couple. There are 38,000,000 people living in California. Their disapproval of officially recognizing so-called same-sex marriage, expressed at the ballot box in 2000, apparently has no bearing on state law. Only the votes of seven people, rather than those 38,000,000, matter. By a margin of 4-3, the California Supreme Court has decided that the state's refusal to officially recognize gay marriages violates the state's constitution. The part in California's constitution that references homosexual unions eluded my notice. I did, however, see various redundant provisions explicitly outlining the right of Californians to self government. "All political power is inherent in the people." "A voter who casts a vote in an election in accordance with the laws of this State shall have that vote counted." "The people find and declare that the Founding Fathers established a system of representative government based upon free, fair, and competitive elections."

There is something inherently conservative in George W. Bush's skepticism of the value of reasoning with the unreasonable. Bush told the Israeli Knesset: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." This may be my favorite line of his presidency. It's not that I oppose talks between the United States and any country, but I just think one of the delusions of modern liberalism is the idea that any conflict can be solved merely by talking. Parties have conflicting interests. Deception leads to a false sense of security among the deceived. And reasoning with the unreasonable is itself a form of unreason. With regard to terrorists, action not words.

Do you think Bill and Hillary understand the liberal bias in the news media now? Following Senator Clinton's absolute thrashing of Senator Obama in West Virginia, headlines curiously read: "Clinton Win Leads to Obama Boost," "This Is an Ex-Candidate," "Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia." I haven't seen such cheerleading disguised as journalism since, well, Bill Clinton first ran for president in 1992.

It's May, 15, the traditional holiday I've just invented that celebrates the best rock album ever, The Who's Quadrophenia. Just as it's obligatory to go to church on Christmas, blow off your thumb lighting fireworks on the Fourth of July, and egg a liberal's house on Halloween, on May 15 it's good form to listen to the song 5:15. The truly devoted listen to 5:15 on 5/15 at 5:15. Others celebrate 5/15 by riding around on scooters, beating up people they perceive as "rockers," and proclaiming themselves the "ace face." Here's wishing you a fabulous 5/15 with five choice cuts from Quadrophenia:

The Real Me
The Punk and the Godfather
Sea and Sand
Love Reign O'er Me
Cut My Hair

Most Americans are on drugs. I realize there is a difference between drug users who obtain their fix from street-corner pharmacists and those prescribed them from licensed physicians. I'm not sure that other people realize how insignificant that difference can be.

"Flynn has written this book in as fair a spirit as his enemies could ask," the American Spectator review of my book explains. If Dan McCarthy's piece on A Conservative History of the American Left doesn't motivate you to pick up a copy of the book, I don't know what will. "There are conservative journalists who write for a mass audience and conservative scholars who write for a narrow one," McCarthy writes. "But Flynn writes for both: his books combine original research--on the streets interviewing leftist protestors as well as in libraries combing through archives--with stylistic flair and common sense. A Conservative History of the American Left is his best book yet."

Why should Hillary Clinton drop out of the presidential race when she just beat the bag out of Barack Obama in West Virginia by greater than a 2-1 margin? It's not like West Virginia is one of her home states, or even borders one of her home states. With all that media pressure to conform to the Obamania, West Virginians did what they failed to do a century-and-a-half ago: rebel.

That the presumptive Democratic nominee can only muster a quarter of the vote in the Democratic primary in a state that Democrats must win in November speaks volumes, even if the media has muted the sound, about the trouble Barack Obama faces. Yes, it's a Democratic year--but so was 2000 and 2004. The Democrats then found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This is a talent, as their candidate selection shows, that they haven't lost.

Obama is a left-winger in an increasingly left-wing party. America, even if frustrated with George Bush and Iraq, is a fundamentally conservative nation. As much as liberal primary voters wish to believe that politicians who believe what they believe should be president, the fact is that Americans have not voted for a true liberal for president in my lifetime. From Mondale to Dukakis to Kerry, Americans have rejected quite a few. Liberal primary voters don't get the hint.

Here's my simplistic lay of the land: a third of the country votes Democrat, a third votes Republican, and a third could go either way. Envision that continuum, with the Democrat third taking up the left side of the line. Within that third, Obama and Clinton fight over the left half that disproportionately vote in Democratic primaries. Within that half of that third, Barack Obama's supporters occupy the left half and Hillary Clinton's supporters occupy the right half. In other words, it's basically the most leftward tenth of the electorate that is propelling Obama's candidacy. Leaving all these confusing fractions aside, the presumptive Democratic nominee represents the Far Left. This is why he gets clubbed in places like West Virginia but wins overwhelmingly in Madison, Berkeley, and Amherst.

The Republicans, on the other hand, have nominated a candidate with the general election in mind. John McCain appeals to independents and even some Democrats. He infuriates conservative Republicans, who, McCain correctly reasons, will probably have no place to go in November. The prospect of a liberal boogeyman is an even greater motivation for Republicans to rush to the polls than a conservative standard bearer would be. Rather than pick a candidate way to the right on that imaginary continuum, Republicans selected a candidate in the middle.

Of course, where one sits on the ideological spectrum is but one factor in handicapping a presidential race. Aside from Democrats benefitting from Bush fatigue, they benefit from a charismatic nominee whose youth juxtaposes nicely with the Republican candidate's elderly status. Republicans can perpetually hope that Democratic primaries continue to reward the McGovernite-Dukakoid wing of the party, otherwise known as the loser wing. But one of these elections that out-of-the-mainstream liberal will slip into the White House. Republicans, be careful what you wish for.

Bob Barr is running for president. "To the extent that people have a choice," Barr reasons, "it's the choice of voting for the party of big government or the party of bigger government." He wants troops home from Iraq. He is for the repeal of McCain-Feingold. He seeks deep cuts in government and taxes. I'm for all that and I vote in the bluest of the blue states, so putting a check mark next to such a maverick candidate is enticing. Voting--entering that partitioned booth, drawing that curtain, marking that Australian ballot, anonymously dropping it into a box--is ostensibly a private affair. But the voter feels the eyes of all his friends and family glaring at him. The peer pressure allows for a vote next to "D" or a vote next to "R," but as soon as your pencil drifts to fill in the circle next to a candidate without one of those magic letters next to his name the peer pressure moves your pencil back to "D" or "R" as if the ballot were a Oujia board and your pencil possessed. People vote with the crowd and not with their hearts. The Oujia board phenomenon, perhaps as much as any systemic handicap, makes Barr's undertaking doomed from the get-go. But there's honor in lost causes, especially when the cause they push is your own.

One of the themes of A Conservative History of the American Left is the inability of leftists to learn from their own mistakes, an amnesia that at once propels an ideology that by virtue of natural selection should have long been extinct and dooms the Left to repeating its own history. But the Left doesn't just forget its own mistakes, it fails to learn from the mistakes of adversaries as well.

Case in point: after the nation-building debacle in Iraq, Time magazine hubristically asks: "Is It Time to Invade Burma?" Time's Romesh Ratnesar writes, "The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through.... That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma." In other words, take our gifts or we will kill you. Hurricane Katrina was a mess, but I didn't hear anyone suggest that foreign soldiers should invade New Orleans because of the mishandling of relief measures.

I have no doubt that the military officers who rule Burma are deplorable in the same way that the tyrant who ruined Iraq, the clerics who ran Afghanistan, and the warlords who ruled Somalia were deplorable. And certainly the U.S. military could overthrow them with alacrity. But what next? If leftists believe things can get better, perfect even, conservatives know they can get worse. True conservatives know overthrowing a stable government is an endeavor fraught with danger, particularly when done by outsiders who don't stand to be harmed much by the havoc they unleash. Though the American military is excellent at wiping out bad guys, it's not very good at social work, nation building, regional policing, or any of the traditionally periphrial missions that have somehow become central.

If righting wrongs becomes the threshold by which to conduct military action, America will forever be at war. Only someone ignorant of history and human nature would make the eradication of non-threatening evil doers a priority of foreign policy. A better standard for interventions, universally accepted by conservatives until very recently, is whether the military action serves America's interests and justice. The Sharon Statement, for instance, concluded with the line: "That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?" Ignoring this bit of wisdom, as Iraq shows and Burma would undoubtedly demonstrate too, comes at great cost in blood, treasure, and power.

America is not, and should not be, a superhero state--crusading against evil throughout the globe. Elements of the Right and Left, unfortunately, think that we should be. On the Right, proponents of a Superhero America want their crusader to act alone, a la Christian Bale's Batman. On the Left, they think Superhero America should work with the Justice League (the United Nations). The only thing the interventionist Left learned from Iraq apparently is the idea that interventionist catastrophes-waiting-to-happen should involve as many countries as possible. Here's a novel idea: if the Burmese want new leaders, they, not the UN or the US, should do something about it.

Mal Kline posts a nice review of A Conservative History of the American Left at AIM.org. "It's a testament to Flynn's talent that reading A Conservative History of the American Left is as enervating as it is entertaining," writes Kathy Shaidle in her review at Pajamas Media. Shaidle has a knack for clever names, as her blog, FiveFeetofFury, and her book, "Acoustic Ladyland," attest.

Rather than ask, "Why doesn't Hillary Clinton just drop out?," isn't the more apt question, "Why can't Barack Obama finish off Hillary Clinton?" The race is supposedly over, but Hillary Clinton keeps winning primaries. She will win in West Virginia and Kentucky. Had Florida and Michigan not violated Democratic Party rules, it's likely that she would be in the position Obama is in now. Obama backers incessantly remind that Clinton cannot win the nomination without the help of superdelegates. They omit the inconvenient fact that neither can Obama. Ironically, what's fueling Obama is what fueled Hillary before the primaries started: the inevitability factor. Voters are asked to back not the candidate they prefer, but the candidate who will win. If Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, can't win Democratic primaries, then he has nobody to blame but himself for Hillary Clinton continuing her campaign until the convention chooses a nominee.

Blogging will be light this weekend. I got summoned to central Texas to dance at a bachelorette party on Friday night. It got wild--Girls Gone Wild to be precise. To make a long story short, I don't think the wedding is going to happen. Some dudes, perhaps the groom's friends, were none too happy about this. Dressed in dark suits and darker shades, and all sporting those annoying communications devices on their lapels (and in their ears), they took several shots at me. This is crazy. I'm now trying to evade them. I'm in some one-stop-light town called Crawford. If you're in the area, and see a guy in a purple g-string, a Lone Ranger mask, and a cowboy hat, please pick him up.

UPDATE: The wedding proceeded as planned. The bride's father is apparently a very powerful man, and those well-dressed men wearing sunglasses and sporting very powerful automatic weapons were his praetorian guard or something.

Hillary Clinton, by all accounts, is a bitter, vindictive, self-righteous lesbian with a castration fetish. Okay. Okay. By some accounts--actually just the ones I heard while working within the VRWC. Way back in the 1990s, when you wore flannels and sported a goatee, Hillary Clinton blamed her husband's, uh, problems on that VRWC--the "vast, right-wing conspiracy." With the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton battle a family affair--save for Rush Limbaugh's hilarious "operation chaos"--Hillary can't blame the VRWC for her current misfortune. So, my question, dear readers, is: who will be the target of presidential loser Hillary Clinton's venom? Who, within the vast left-wing conspiracy was out to get Hillary Clinton? Who will be seen as Villain Number One? There's no G. Gordon Liddy, R. Emmitt Tyrrell, Richard Mellon Scaife, or Reed Irvine to kick around, and, of course, Hillary Clinton isn't to blame for her choke job. So, sleuths, whodunnit? Who from the vast left-wing conspiracy tops Hillary's updated enemies list?