The Frank Rich column Jon Adler links to would be laughable if it weren’t so shameful. Indeed, it’s precisely the sort of paranoid nonsense Frank Rich would mock if it came from an anti-Clinton conservative in the 1990s. But it is interesting in one respect. He’s angry at the American people for not replaying the 1960s. I keep seeing this weepy babyboomer nostalgia popping up. Rich writes:

In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug. This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s.

Ah, yes. Things would be so much better today if we had riots and “angry assaults on American governmental institutions.” Just like in the good old days.

Update: From a reader:

Come on, Jonah. This is a Frank Rich column. He HAD to mention Vietnam. At least he didn’t mention Watergate.(Or did he? Guess I better go check..)