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The Atlantic, Kurt Andersen:  "How America Lost Its Mind."  Or, what's with the crackpottery.  With video.

Of course, I have a few nits:

And then factions of the new left went to work making and setting off thousands of bombs in the early 1970s.

Hundreds, honey.  There's a book to be called Fantasyland:  How America Went Haywire.  I want to see the footnotes, frankly.

Quick substantive quote:

Another way the GOP got loopy was by overdoing libertarianism. I have some libertarian tendencies, but at full-strength purity it’s an ideology most boys grow out of. On the American right since the ’80s, however, they have not. Republicans are very selective, cherry-picking libertarians: Let business do whatever it wants and don’t spoil poor people with government handouts; let individuals have gun arsenals but not abortions or recreational drugs or marriage with whomever they wish; and don’t mention Ayn Rand’s atheism. Libertarianism, remember, is an ideology whose most widely read and influential texts are explicitly fiction.

[Emphasis in original.]
(Mr. Andersen appears to be somewhat conservative.  Keep that in mind.) Note his section on 45.

Via odaiwai's comment at Making Light.