I always find it interesting when liberals give advice to conservatives on what conservatives should do to help the conservative movement. It’s also interesting when they try to describe why conservatives think the way they do. Both of these phenomena were on display today over at the Huffington Post college page, along with a substantial amount of whining and hand-wringing.

Keith William Neely, a liberal student at Vanderbilt, describes scary right-wing radicalism thusly:

“At Vanderbilt for example, a local chapter of the radical libertarian organization Young Americans for Liberty has found limited success in putting on large events like the one on March 26th, where they prominently displayed the ‘National Debt Clock’ alongside photocopied images of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to illustrate the need for disbanding the Federal Reserve. At public events, they wear Guy Fawkes masks to advertise their presence, and have even been known to target conservatives with their extremist ire. At the recent IMPACT Symposium, members of the organization passed out leaflets pejoratively branding both Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol as ‘neo-cons’.”

Yes, they called Bill Kristol a neo-con! The horrors! A national debt clock, my stars, lawd-a-mussy!

As with a lot of liberal “advice” to conservatives, he advocates for the return to an imaginary conservatism of the past that played nice and was easily ignored by liberals:

“They simply can’t afford to let a small band of radicals wrest away control of the movement that Buckley popularized — that Reagan realized.”

The poor lad may be forgiven for such an egregious misrepresentation of Buckley and Reagan (I imagine Bill would like to electrocute him, as he probably uses the word ‘fair’ in connection with income tax policies), since the only picture he has of these two is what he’s read on liberal blogs. Oh well. At least no conservatives will listen to him.

Sorry for ranting, I just had to let it out.

Also of note, you may have missed the headline “Pope Blesses the Tar Heels.” Art Pope, that is, with $3 million for an athlete academic center. It got a thumbs-down in the Quick Hits section of the Daily Tar Heel today. Ingrates.