When I was a kid one of my favorite plays was Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee's "Inherit the Wind." It's a fictionalized version of the Scopes "Monkey" trial, when a Tennessee biology teacher was arrested for daring to teach evolution to his biology class. Written in 1955, it's dramatic and exciting. 

It's also a thinly disguised allegory of the clash between conservatism in its McCarthyite phase, and the era's liberals as they liked to see themselves. The liberals in the play, like defense attorney Henry Drummond, are all cool, measured, and rational, and able to see both sides of an issue. The teacher's evangelical opponents, led by three-time unsuccessful presidential candidate and all-around blowhard Matthew Brady, are a ravening, howling mob of ignorant rednecks, filled with fear and hate. 

That's, of course, how liberals still see the world. It's emblazoned on every DARWIN car sign. But what we've seen in this presidential campaign is that if anyone is playing the hysterical ignorant redneck, it's the liberals.