The Guardian, of all places, the principal left-wing paper of the U.K., has noted that greenies tend to be selfish and smug bastards. Well, that's not the way they put it but it's confirmation, from not at all the usual suspects, of what the real world has known forever.

According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".

Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.

The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it - in other words, steal - they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

It's very nice to have empirical evidence of something which was screamingly obvious from the first.

One of the many things that I've noticed in my sojourn in the fever swamps of America Left is how they don't bother with numbers all that much. They're all about feelings and "social justice" and their own hot-house sentimental demands, but something quantifiable? Fuhgeddaboutit.

They perceive themselves as being virtuous and they are the most sanguinary and selfish people that I have ever seen, short of spoiled rich girls in LA.

Mike Malloy, the 8-to-11PM moonbat on XM 167, has many bêtes noirs, but the one which bothers him the most is Glenn Beck. Who is very successful, unlike Mr. Malloy, who is complaining that he can't afford to give away more than one $50 podcast subscription a week. Well, he might be greedy too. Mr. Malloy was fulminating about Mr. Beck and issued a litany of imprecations: "I can't chop Beck up into little pieces. I can't send an IED to explode where he will drive his Escalade." And five minutes more of the same death wishes. "All I can do is talk about him on this twenty-five-cent radio show."

The first number he's used and it's accurate.