Thomas Frank: Charlie Black's Cronies

July 2, 2008; Page A11

Doing some research in the Library of Congress recently, an associate of mine came across a curious artifact of the Young Americans for Freedom, the high-spirited conservative group of the Vietnam era.

It is a songbook prepared for YAF's 1971 convention, and in its mimeographed pages you will find a lyric poking fun at "Adlai [Stevenson] the bald-headed Com-Symp," and another moaning that, in the State Department, "everyone's a Commie slave." All good clean fun, surely. Turn a few pages, though, and you will find that the righteous ones also lifted their young voices to warble "Cara al Sol," the humor-free anthem of Spanish fascism.