How's this for 'paranoid style'?

How's this for 'paranoid style'?

Your columnist Gene Lyons mocks and ridicules Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz for promoting a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is holding military exercises in Texas as a preparation for an imposition of martial law and takeover of the U.S.

He goes on to accuse such conservatives of having a "paranoid style." I found this funny, coming from Lyons.

He and Joe Conason co-authored a book about a right-wing campaign against former president Bill Clinton which led eventually to his impeachment for committing perjury. Democrat intellectuals want us to believe that only "right-wing" conspiracies exist, if at all. Lyon's comments also demonstrate that he is out of touch with his own intellectual forbearers. I offer a few examples:

• Woodrow Wilson: "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States - in the fields of commerce and manufacturing - are afraid of somebody. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

• Franklin D. Roosevelt: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

• Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: The real rulers of Washington are Invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.

• Bill Clinton: "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans."

How's that for "paranoid style"?

George Kocan

Warrenville