HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF, THIS TIME AS FARCE: Read this Virginia Postrel piece from 1995 and compare it to the latest “narrative” being peddled in Washington. Excerpt:

I wrote that in April 1990. In April 1995, it would have gotten me declared an enemy of the state, an inciter of violence, and for all intents and purposes the murderer of babies.

Which, in the eyes of E. J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Bill Clinton of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I apparently am. After all, in REASON’s May issue, which subscribers received in early April, I suggested that Americans are rightly afraid of government power, and I criticized Washingtonians for being too cool to use the word tyranny in polite conversation.

Back then, it was gauche to point out that Washington rules by force–that lawmakers’ symbolic gestures, from drug laws to wetlands regulations to the Americans with Disabilities Act, are enforced by government agents backed by guns. It was gauche to suggest that many government actions are unjust. It was gauche to tell Washington that the rage of the powerless was building in the land.

Now it’s not just gauche, it’s criminal. It makes you a terrorist, guilty by association. . . . Many commentators have noted that Clinton can’t tell the difference between talking and acting. They mean that he substitutes words for deeds, especially in foreign policy, and is shocked when his yammering has no effect.

In the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, we have seen a different side of that confusion–the deliberate conflation of his opponents’ words with the deadly deeds of a handful of vicious, isolated individuals. Using tactics that would make Joe McCarthy sit up and take notes, Bill Clinton has sought to intimidate critics of government policy by branding them as terrorists.

Dionne, of course, was a reliable narrative-peddling tool then, as now, and Bill Clinton was, well, just a tool. Then as now. But read the whole thing. Some background here.