WHAT IS MY JACKBOOT DOING ON MY NECK?

Jonah Goldberg in 2003:

What makes McCarthyism so hard to discuss is that McCarthy behaved like a jerk, but he was also right... 

Senator Joe McCarthy was a lout, generally speaking. But he was on the right side of history and, in a broad sense, of morality as well. If, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers, and the like were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today... 

When they denounce McCarythism, they are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people. That is a lie. And it also a lie that the USA Patriot Act is being used solely to punish innocent people. 

Ah, those were the days, when conservatives thought defending unpopular ideas was objectively pro-commie and objectively pro-Saddam. Things have changed. This week in USA Today, Goldberg tells us that when college students let it be known that they don't want rightwing political figures to speak at their own graduation, it's a liberal fascist "thought-crime crackdown."

Like the older column, Goldberg's new one is a wretched mess -- he denounces "the so-called 'Red Scare' of the World War I era," which is basically denouncing "the so-called atrocity I am asserting," and compares the Red Scare prosecutions of and assaults on alleged communists to Harry Reid calling the Koch Brothers un-American. (I'm sure Convict No. 9653 would have traded places with the Kochs any day of the week.)

But while autopsying Goldberg's prose is fun, let's not miss the point: while the conservative schtick-of-the-moment about liberals oppressing them is hilarious in several ways, it is useful to remember that these people are natural bullies. As in Goldberg's case, they demonstrated this in their writing back when their tide was high -- and they demonstrate it still on people over whom they still have control, namely the poor, whom they punish sadistically every chance they get. I'd say their bullshit about being oppressed is the result of guilty consciences, if I thought they had consciences.

UPDATE. Comments are glorious. To this particularly Goldberg blubberburst over liberalfascist oppression of racist billionaires --

I have no sympathy for disgraced L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's views about race, but there's something troubling about how so many people are comfortable with vilifying a man for something he said in private, possibly even during couples' counseling.

-- mortimer2000 has a nice rejoinder:

There's a Ms. Lewinsky calling on the "safe" line, Mr. Goldberg.

Picking up the same theme (the launch of Goldberg's career on his mother's Clinton espionage, if you didn't click the link), smut clyde highlights Goldberg's reference to "vilifying a man for something he said in private" and adds, "Yep, if Jonah wants to maintain this new-found moral principle, it could make for an awkward Mothers' Day conversation."