Rich Lowry accuses liberals who recoil at Tea Party paranoia of "hypocrisy":
Only an overcaffeinated tea partier would believe that the U.S. is on the path from “an open society into dictatorship,” right? Who could think that there are ten simple steps to establishing a police state and “that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States”?
As you might have gathered, these aren’t the words of an unhinged right-winger but an unhinged left-winger: Naomi Wolf, author of the perfervid 2007 book The End of America.
Except that Naomi Wolf is a tea partier:
Maybe a better example could be found.
Now, I certainly take Lowry's point -- anti-government paranoia can be found on both the left and right. I'd argue that left-wing paranoia is a much more politically marginal phenomenon than right-wing paranoia -- you didn't see Congressional Democrats routinely calling President Bush a fascist.