Andrew Sullivan’s “Quote of the Day” is from a blogger named John Coleman :

“There is no theocracy in the United States, and we remain one of the freest and most open countries in the globe; but what happens when the party that once promised to guard this freedom transforms into its detractor? In the late 1990s Bill Clinton shifted domestic politics to the right BECAUSE he was a Democrat (and could). What happens when the party of the right leans away from the defense of liberty and toward the despicable martial art of book burning?”

Please. The “book burning” reference is to some Alabama state legislator who apparently wants to ban some books in Alabama. It is upon this thin gruel Mr. Coleman works himself up into a mighty fine lather about Republicans, the conservative movement and its failure to deal with its drift toward book burning (actually the Alabama guy wants to bury the books). Coleman’s essay is in turn a response to Michael Totten’s “challenge” to conservatives (other than Sullivan) to complain about Conservative nanny-statism. Coleman & Totten both make it sound like no “prominent conservative” has raised any objections to nanny-statism.

Okay, two points: One do I now get to extrapolate from every nutty idea a leftwing state legislator comes up with a new drift of the entire Democratic Party and liberalism generally? Is Maxine Waters the new weathervane of American liberalism. Give me a break. It doesn’t take courage to condemn this sort of thing, it takes awareness of it. And, unless your scouring the Guardian for hit-pieces on the American right, you probably missed this whole story.

Second: It’s just a fable that conservatives haven’t complained about Bush’s nanny-statism and expansion of entitlements. To think otherwise indicates that you’ve been reading too much of the Guardian and too little of National Review or even the Washington Post.