[greymule]

Could you provide some published quotes or links to news stories that identify and quote these people as saying these things? Every time I try to research such references I discover that the boogeymen are mostly figments of overly partisan imaginations, the kind of imaginations that cause their owners to say things like "you're either with us (the current administration and its policies) or you're with the terrorists."

Start your search with the names Ward Churchill (see "Little Eichmanns") and Ted Turner (see "I wasn't sure which side I was on"). There are college professors now teaching that the U.S. government itself staged the entire 911 incident. The instances are not hard to find.

I'd sure like to see some substantiation for claims that these "lefties" "filled the local papers with letters" making the claims you state.

I don't save the local papers, but I'll start cutting out letters for you. Maybe they'll publish another one from the woman who wrote in last year about how she couldn't sleep at night because at her daughter's graduation, they asked everyone to stand up as the seniors entered the auditorium. So she stood up with everyone else but was then horrified to hear the national anthem begin. She didn't feel comfortable sitting down at that point, but forced herself to stand through the Star-Spangled Banner and has felt guilty ever since. Somehow I doubt that your nephew and that woman have much in common. I doubt that your Navy pilot nephew would be offended by the flag on my vehicle.

rightwingers who have, until very recently, controlled the entire federal government, as well as much of the broadcast and publishing media

The entire federal government? How many of the 100 senators would you have labeled as right wingers? And the media? Right-wing outlets like the NY Times, the LA Times, CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, Time, Newsweek? Over ninety percent of reporters are self-described liberals. Better inform them they're working for the enemy.

Then why don't you dust off that old conservative battlecry "America - Love it or Leave it!" I'm old enough to remember where that cliche originated - with the rightwingers trying to quash criticism of Richard Nixon's administration of the Vietnam war.

You're not going to get away with that one. There were patriotic Americans who opposed the war in Vietnam, and there are patriotic Americans who oppose the war in Iraq. And most liberals I know are dedicated patriots as well. But to the people who proclaim that America is the villain on the world stage—the people who complain to the town when it puts up flags on July 4—I would respond, "Then what are you doing here?" And I will continue to fly the American flag and hope they're offended.

I must be older than you, because I remember "America—Love It or Leave It" bumper stickers several years before Nixon was president.

I do agree that there are nutjobs on left and right. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took a page from the Falwell/Robertson book when he declared that Hurricane Katrina hit part of Mississippi because Trent Lott had praised Strom Thurmond.

An afterthought: Dave was offended because he thought that, by using the term lefties, I was lumping his nephew in with some extremists. Judging by the politics of the military guys I know, an ideology that would cause someone in the military to adopt or be tagged with "Lefty" as a humorous sobriquet would probably actually fall somewhere in the middle of the American political spectrum. Such an ideology would have nothing whatsoever to do with the people I'm talking about—the small minority of America-haters who tend to congregate in university settings.