Past Due: Constructive National Self-Examination

Thanks to the conservative resurgence that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the 1960s took a severe and mostly undeserved beating. It was supposedly the decade when the country began "slouching toward Gomorrah," in the words of Robert Bork, the former federal appeals court judge who tends to slouch toward anything suppressive and autocratic. But the conservative storyline about the 1960s is bankrupt. Iraq and the Bush years have exposed conservatism for the duplicitous opportunism that it's been. Ronald Reagan is crying on the cover of Time because he sees what's coming.