I borrowed Happy Days Were Here Again, a decade's collection of William F. Buckley's work as columnist, from the library this evening and am astounded by twenty-year-old threads; in one respect connecting this year to Cold War twilight through similarity and in another illustrating how far the American left has decayed into a burbling mass. Buckley stuck Jesse Jackson in 1985 for artfully comparing murder in Buchenwald to South African apartheid — two crimes that nonetheless could not possibly share degrees of horror and shame. Attempting the metaphor was a silly thing for Jackson to do in 1985, and two months ago the revolting crank Charles Rangel compared Hitler's death camps to the liberation — the liberation — of twenty-five million trapped inside a different abattoir.
The appearance of being normal is quite a commodity when a look back shows that the cracks were already well-defined a generation ago. If it weren't for the leftist media's controlling interest in public opinion and information, the Democratic Party would be spending even-years splitting county seats with the Greens.