Michael Barone, Washington Examiner: Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP’s Gulf oil spill. Take Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s remark that he would keep his “boot on the neck” of BP, which brings to mind George Orwell’s definition of totalitarianism as “a boot stamping on a

I’ve got your populist pragmatism right here, you sniveling, finger-wagging cowards. (h/t John Bradley)

— Namely, by the institutionalization of a fear of shame, and the creation of enough shame — by way of demanding the present answer for the past — to place everyone in constant worry of covering himself in it. All of which leads to a culture of sanctimonious finger-waggers who, as I noted last night, are afraid of their own shadows. Herd animals. Looking for scapegoats. And as is usual,