Sorry, Barry. Your dream is dead.

Ronald Reagan was probably the last prominent Republican to even bother trying to claim the legacy of the widely hailed father of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, although the credibility of that claim was as elastic as Paul Krassner's silly putty reality. This crowd doesn't even bother.

Michael Berube shares his thoughts...

People who support a clandestine program of warrantless domestic spying are not “conservatives” or “libertarians.” Neither are people who support the creation of a worldwide archipelago of secret torture sites. Neither are people who support the usurpation of the functions of government by the executive branch; who espouse the theory that the executive branch is the final arbiter of the legality of the actions of the executive branch; and who call for the investigation or prosecution of a free press that dares to report on the executive branch’s secret programs of domestic spying and outsourced torture.

Berube calls them "the radical right." Since they don't want to conserve anything, or build anything, since they're so hell bent on destroying our democracy, I call them destructionists.

Maybe Senator Goldwater was right, after all, though. Maybe it's time for a little extremism in the defense of liberty, because there's a awful lot of it on the other side. Maybe that's our job.



Hat tip to John Willams at Thudfactor