I'm a great fan of absurd conservative paeans to a golden age of freedom before the liberals and the government made every little thing illegal, something like: "I can remember when it was perfectly fine to drive my pickup down the street without my seat-belt on, drinking a beer, throwing firecrackers out the window while my two year old sat in my lap playing with the steering wheel.  Man, try that now and they'll lock you up and put your kid in foster care."  

We have a real grump deliver stuff to our office, your typical guy who hates the government but of course has relied on a state paycheck the last 30 years, so I hear stuff like this all the time, "Did you hear the kids soccer league made it illegal for one team to win because they say it hurts the other kid's self-esteem?"  Its not just the office crank either, check out this crappy editorial from a paid columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. 

Alas, except for reliance on this "compelling" meta-narrative of how the country's gone to hell, most conservative commentators have a particularly thin skin when it comes to defending themselves against criticism as well as a tendency to cloak themselves in the kind of "victimhood" they accuse ideologues on the left of propagating.  Today's example, Glenn Beck.  I've already established that I think Glenn is an idiot but then Keith Olbermann also said as much in a Rolling Stone interview.  This drew a strong rebuke from Glenn using words like "McCarthyism" and "destroying democracy" and "limiting the marketplace of ideas"....which of course makes me think, "Christ, when did it become illegal for somebody to call somebody else an idiot?"