Ace of Spades tries to explain why "progressives" hate Jeff Goldstein (the Protein Wisdom guy for the uninitiated):

The left, to a man, considers itself to be educated and enlightened. It matters not how little actual schooling a particlular leftist may have had, nor how unintelligent the person might be. They all consider themselves intellectuals of sorts. If they dropped out of college after one semester, they just think of themselves as autodidacts whose genius could not be stimulated by the ossified and bourgeois teaching of the academy. If they're just plain stupid or crazy -- like, say, Charlie Sheen -- they indulge in farcial conspiracy-theorizing, reassuring themselves that they are intellectual because they know things others do not. They are one of the chosen few brave enough to see past the web of lies and glimpse the arcane truth behind, say, the implosion of the World Trade Center (a SEAL team planted those charges, you know?).

This conceit, usually wholly undeserved, of practically every leftist in the world is what makes leftism so intoxicating for the intellectually insecure, and what makes leftists so easily led and manipulated. It's an attractive doctrine for those who wish to conceive of themselves as intellectual and brilliant, for it provides an instant short-cut to the equivalent of an MIT education. If you simply believe these things we tell you to believe, you are one of Us, one of the Intellectually Elite, one of the Cultural Vanguard. Just as giving oneself to Christ, and believing in His power, and accepting the need for and gift of His redemption, instantly makes one "saved" and enters one's name in the Book of the Heaven, so too does accepting leftist tropes and core beliefs make one one of the Secular Elect.

It goes on for a lot longer... and its all total bullshit.  First of all, I love Protein Wisdom (in a non-gay, manly way of course... because after all... the guy does eat paste).  Though sometimes his more serious posts go on for so long, that someone of my attention span just has to scroll past to look for his conversations with the latest medication he's taking.  In fact, from time to time I channel Protein Wisdom in my posts.  He's hilarious.

But this whole, "the 'left' is conceited and full of itself for no good reason" crap is really just a good way to draw traffic through an Instalanche.  And who can blame him?  After all, it is nice to get traffic.  But the fact is that "the left" is not conceited, stupid, reactionary, or anything else.  Members of "the left" might be, but then again, so are members of "the right".  That's what happens on the extremes of any scale.  They get, well... extreme.  Why do you think I stopped reading LGF?  And Michelle Malkin... well... I read her less and less to the point that I might as well stop.  Extreme gets you attention, and people love attention.  This is human, not progressive or conservative.

People in general dislike being wrong... a lot.  For most people, when confronted with facts that might disprove their beliefs, their immediate reaction is to attack that new information, or change the subject and attack the information barer.  It is a human thing to do... not a progressive or conservative thing to do.  Rare is it that someone examines this new information and changes their core values.  To do that is to force a person to confront their past, and question what they did, and whether it was a total waste of their life.  That's a hard thing to do, for anyone.

It's also important to realize how much the anonymity, and the distance of the internet, causes these attacks to occur.  People are perfectly willing to attack others on the internet, even if their name is attached to it, than they are face to face.  It's easy, it's impersonal, and it provides immediate satisfaction to the attacker, while insulating them from the immediate consequence of the attack.  This is a human thing to do, not a progressive or conservative thing to do.

So go through and read the entire Ace of Spades post.  Then re-read it again, and replace the word "left" with "right" and the word "progressive" with "conservative", and try to tell me it doesn't seem just as accurate.  Go on, I dare you.