RALEIGH – You can tell, from the panicked expressions and vitriolic attacks, that the Left senses impending defeat. Perhaps they’re mistaken, but I doubt it.

It reminds me of how some Republicans and conservatives of my acquaintance looked about four years ago. In November 2004, President George W. Bush won reelection with big plans and solid GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. Less than a year later, after Katrina and Harriet Miers and failed legislative initiatives and an explosion of violence in Iraq, the trend lines had crossed. Democrats were reorganized and energized. Republicans were frustrated and divided. Among the ideologues, there was a similar dynamic. Much of the Left felt empowered. Much of the Right felt either deflated (if they had ever liked Bush) or disgusted (if they’d always figured him as a Southern-fried chip off the old moderate block).

That doesn’t necessarily mean that 2010 will be a replay of 1994, or of 2006 in reverse. It’s just a reminder that, as has been often observed, history doesn’t so much repeat as rhyme.

If legislative or electoral setbacks plague the Left in the coming months, you can expect ad hominem of increasing intensity. Republicans will be not just mistaken but evil. Conservatives will be not just misguided but sadistic. Health insurance executives will seem to remove their still-dripping fangs from the victims of ObamaCare’s defeat, turn their greedy faces to the heavens, and howl the first stanza of “Dixie.” You get the drift.

Because all this nonsense will be more of a tantrum or coping mechanism than a serious rhetorical position, the Right would be wise just to let it go. When your toddler doesn’t get his way and pitches a fit, screaming at the top of his lungs that he hates you, you don’t pay him any mind, do you? Similarly, it’s best not to take it personally when otherwise rational people have spasms of political petulance.

Still, to my “progressive” friends who honestly don’t see how in the world anyone could disagree with the moral imperative of socialized health insurance, bailout bills, or cap-and-tax legislation, I’ll offer a brief explanation.

Advocates of smaller government and greater freedom believe we’re right. We don’t just think our policy preferences are more practical, efficient, or likely to prevail. We aren’t cynically doing the bidding of some corporatist conspiracy. We believe our position is a moral imperative – that when government encroaches on the individual rights to life, liberty, and property, even in the pursuit of a praiseworthy end, it is our moral obligation to resist this encroachment.

Here’s an even simpler way to put it. When you say “spend,” we hear “steal.”

When you say that state government should spend more on education, we remember how taxes are collected and hear that you want the people currently in power to steal more money from the taxpayers to redistribute to the interest groups who keep them in power.

When you say that the federal government should “reform” health care through mandates, regulations, and spending on a “public option,” we hear that you want the IRS to steal more money from the taxpayers to subsidize politically favored interest groups and give federal bureaucrats the power to dictate when, where, and how private households and businesses can buy insurance and health care.

When you say that federal and state agencies should seek to combat climate change through new regulations and alternative-energy spending, we hear that you want to steal more money from the general public, either explicitly through taxes or implicitly through higher energy prices, to subsidize politically favored interest groups and give federal bureaucrats the power to dictate when, where, and how private households and businesses can live, work, shop, and travel.

In our view, you “progressives” want to make America more like Europe, where government-sanctioned stealing is widespread, economic ruinous, socially debilitating, and depressing. We would prefer that Europe become more like America, though it’s up to Europeans to figure that out for themselves, and in the meantime we want you to keep your hands in your own pockets and mind your own business.

Sorry if stating the matter bluntly makes you a little hot under the collar. We’ll avert our eyes politely until the tantrum is over.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation