Jonah Goldberg, in sackcloth.
In the next few days, there will be a wave of liberals — Frank Rich comes particularly to mind — who will use WFB's memory to beat up on today's conservatives. Ramesh and I wrote a piece about this tendency last year. Liberals today bemoan how wonderful the conservatives of yesteryear were solely to lament how terrible they are today. The recent bout of Goldwater nostalgia on the left was a perfect example.
Yes, we sure do pine for the days when "conservatives" weren't complete assholes, a concept that appears to elude Mr "Party of Death" and Mr. "Liberal Fascism."
Or when they weren't complete waterheads, either:
The strange new respect liberals have for Ronald Reagan would be another.
That would be a very strange phenomenon indeed, were it to exist. Reagan is "respected" by liberals only to the extent that he was no George W. Bush, which is like saying that snot is "respectable" because it's not diarrhea.
Moreover:
That said, I'm delighted to have conservative heroes become simply American heroes.
Hero worship? Sniff. Myself, I leave that to the fascists.