If the shoe fits

Too bad I'm not a paying member of NYT Select, but David Brooks writes a brilliant article arguing that the Democratic Party has become the party of paranoia.

Brooks writes that even though Patrick Fitzgerald did not bring charges of outing a covert agent against Scooter Libby or the 'evil' Karl Rove, Democrats are still filled with "grand conspiracy theories that would be at home in the John Birch Society."

Quoting from an essay by Richard Hofstadter written 40 years ago, Brooks argues that the Democrats "are dispossessed, who feel their country has been taken away from them and their kind" and "[developed] an angry, suspicious and conspiratorial frame of mind. It is never enough to believe their opponents have committed honest mistakes or have legitimate purposes; they insist on believing in malicious conspiracies."

If the shoe fits...