Reader’s Digest will file for bankruptcy. This is not a surprise. (Many moons ago, I wrote on troubles at the Digest.) Neither is the Wash Post’s story, which in its attempts to be cute betrays a feeling of glee. It also describes the Digest’s worldview as “generally conservative, both socially and politically (the Digest was staunchly, even rabidly, anti-communist during the Cold War years).”

To certain people, there’s no such thing as an anti-Communist. There are only “rabid” anti-Communists. Interesting choice of words. Etymologically speaking, “rabid” shares a root with “rabies,” the disease. It suggests a lunatic frenzy, produced by an infected mind. So obviously you’re “rabid” if you put out a magazine that publishes articles on defectors who can bear witness to totalitarianism or introduces Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom to a broad readership.