From Joshua Snyder

Don’t blame me when McBama or Ocain put the last shovels on the grave of the Old Republic; we had the chance, my fellow Americans, as Wyatt, a.k.a. “Captain America,” said as if answering Benjamin Franklin’s famous “A republic ... if you can keep it” remark at the end of Easy Rider (1969), “We blew it, man; we blew it.”

A conservatism that identifies with McGovern more than Reagan, Gore Vidal more than William F. Buckley Jr., and the New Left more than the religious right probably has no political future. Neither does a [Bill] Kauffmanesque coalition of libertarians and socialists, segregationists and Black Panthers, hippies and Birchers, however interesting that coalition might be.

— W. James Antle III

Future or not, count me in.