Jonah, since you haven’t yet seen the Star Wars execresence yet, you may not know that, in what may be the worst writing moment of his career, Andrew Sullivan has actually decided to echo the worst screenplay ever written by the worst screenplay writer. When Andy wrote, in that nauseatingly self-gratulatory passage you quote, “This is how liberty dies – with scattered, knee-jerk applause,” he was speaking in the voice of Natalie Portman, who, in Star Wars ROTS, says, “This is how liberty dies — to thunderous applause.” If he’s going to go all camp on us, couldn’t the Sullied One have quoted Mae West or Joan Crawford or Bette Davis or something?