Oh, both, I think. I slowly came to realize that much of “movement” conservatism, including neoconservatism and certainly social conservatism, started as reaction to the counterculture. And the spawn of baby boom righties not old enough to remember the 1960s have been brainwashed to regard the counterculture with dread and horror.

One little example: Last September after the big antiwar march around the White House I came across some rightie comments claiming the marchers were smelly and unwashed, which was always the establishment claim against freaks. (Which was weird because, truth be told, the bulk of us were well socialized into American middle class sensibilities about soap and toothpaste. If anything we practiced better hygiene than our detractors.) Anyway, since the crowd in Washington was not, in fact, smelly and unwashed, I have to assume the righties were just replaying old tapes.

Weird stuff, as I say.

The political realignment that’s happened in this country in the last five years is simply amazing: Sandra Day O’Connor, a Reagan appointee, is considered “liberal.” Others, who were arguably leftist or left-leaning, have gone completely nuts (see: Dershowitz, Alan). And, the other day, I found myself nodding in agreement with Pat Buchannan and Chris Matthews as they discussed the growing Iraq civil war. As Greenwald’s persuasively argued in recent posts, the central divide in the US right now is between neo-conservativism and the absence of neo-conservativism.

But right now, I have to try to get the image of David Broder with love beads out of my head . . . thanks maha!