I don’t know about you, but I was taught that even if Joseph McCarthy believed his list of subversives, the Red Scares of the 1950s were shameful in themselves. Even if private actors created the Hollywood blacklist, the government’s intimidation tactics made it an outrage against a culture of free speech and free expression.

So why aren’t conservatives up in arms that a government-funded think tank launched a project staffed with decorated veterans of the American security state and then spent years deliberately perpetrating a fraud — framing-up American citizens as Russian bots in an attempt to bully Silicon Valley to censor the speech of Americans-often random, if voluble citizens, that it didn’t like?

If this doesn’t get your blood pumping, then maybe we should all pack it in and concede that “Securing Democracy” means Bill Kristol, some overpaid spook consultants, and a handful of lying progressive think tanks get to run the world without input from the Americans they find so loathsome.

[I’d guess that the conservative reaction is just beginning. Republicans have control of the House and are likely to include this in their probe of the weaponization of government. We should see a more robust reaction at that point. Also, there may be some caution to make sure the Right doesn’t get too far out over its skis first. — Ed]